Hearing myself respond to my Call

This is been part of the lore of Ham Radio and written about since before WWII. I've read about it since before becoming a ham in 1965.

One discussion I once read many years ago, so I fail to remember the source; was that one ham calculated the time of the echo. He "assumed" if turned around within seconds of reception; the measured delay divided by the speed of light placed Alpha Centuri as a probable "return" of the echo path.

The theorm continued with the hypothsis that if we received some strange communication, it would not be unusual to return the same message to initiate a dialog.

Tap Tap.......Tap Tap....
who's there??..... who's there???
Who's there that says "who's there?"?... Who's there that says "who's there that says 'who's there?"?

Nature dictates that we continue dialog to learn by adding additional portions of the message each time. Yet we fail to continue the dialog thinking someone is pulling a prank on us... so probably now, some ET teen-ager shows buddies how he can ping planet earth, then they move on to other things becoming bored with us..

After all what we call static just might be alien communications...we're just too dumb to decode it.

 

Additions/corrections to my last post:

1. The Trojan points are also called LaGrangian points. Their existence was pointed out by LaGrange over 200 years ago.

2. The author of "The High Frontier" is Gerard O'Neill.

3. Dr. Bracewell is still alive! Sorry about that, Ron.

Scientists take this stuff seriously - several attampts have been made using very expensive telescope time to try to locate possible Bracewell probes. No luck as yet. If you're interested, check out Project Bootes, or do a search on Bracewell probes, or von Neumann probes.

 

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (w1it @ Oct. 26 2002,12:37)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (G3SEA @ Oct. 23 2002,16:18)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">

Dave WA2DXQ has a point but there are probably only one or two pranksters out there doing this BUT
how does this explain the numerous historical instances of this phenomena with delay durations of MINUTES
long before modern recorders and SSB were even thought of

Like many mysteries there is more to this than meets the eye [/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
The problem with LDE is there is not a scratch of credible physical proof of any of it. What people "think" they hear and what actually is there may be quite different.
As far as low power HF radio signals, which all amateur signals are, traveling millions of miles and being returned is rubbish.  If you would posulate a time/space warp, i.e. somehow signals being advanced or retraded in time/space, that might do the trick. At least there you've not an inverse square law to deal wit. [/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sfonline.htm

Check that site and search for LDE, and Long Delayed Echo

 

W8LM touched on another related subject ( Static,White Noise,Galactic noise may be composed of or contain contain intelligent tranmissions that at this stage in our technology we don't know ( officially ) how to decipher ) is also the subject of ongoing research.

Far out as this concept may seem now remember it was Einstein who stated that " Imagination is
more important than Information "

 

Isn't that exciting? My early cw efforts on 40m (tech+) resulted in a long path return of my signal. GRIN...I kept waiting for the other "station" to send its call for about 5-10 minutes before I realized it was own signal making the around the world trip! 73!

 

While I do not know what makes long delayed echos possible, I do know that they have been reported on a semi regular basis since at least the 1920's.

The echos I heard in 1969 (see earlier post) I think were caused by long path signals being received very slightly later than the same signals via short hop or ground wave. That evening I noticed that there was very short hop propogation along with "normal" F layer propogation. I always wondered if it is possible for many very short hops, along with the normal long hop, long path, F layer propogation could combine to produce a very short duration echo effect.

I have heard relatively local stations out on the edge of groundwave coverage have a noticeable echo or watery sound when both the groundwave and the long path signals arrive. There is a question in either the old Advanced class or the present Extra class question pool that deals with signals sounding watery or having an echo effect.

If you throw in some kind of E layer propogation consisting of very short multiple hops around the globe, you could have a second echo. Of course the E layer ionization clouds would have to be just right in order for this to happen. Throw in an Aurora effect or a meteor trail ping and maybe you get a 4th echo that might be discernable on a scope. I would like to see the scope pattern for a signal with a diserrnable to the ear echo. This is all of very short duration and can not be classified as LDE.

73
George
K3UD

 

Considering the number of lids out there this has got to be a recording of your signal. I've heard random stuff played back, mostly lids trying to annoy a net.

It's cool to hear a signal via both long and short path - in N Ca I hear 7's QRO with their beam pointed straight north - sounds like they are in an ampitheater. The delay is - somebody can computer this exactly 1/5 or 1/6 o a second.

 

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (kf6iiu @ Oct. 28 2002,11:39)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Considering the number of lids out there this has got to be a recording of your signal.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Yes! Especially given all the cheap digital recorders out there. That is the most probable explanation and you'd accept it first unless there was something to make you think otherwise. Its called simplest first in science ( Occam's Razor)

Delays of a fraction of a second are easily explained by F layer round the planet propagation. I recall a number of years ago I was using a non-directional antenna on 17 and heard an Italian station almost as loud long path as short. Not multi echos however. Also there may be a way for the ionesphere to short term store and repeat signals without need for the signal propagating around the planet.

The idea of large refectors at millions of miles in space can't be supported with weak ham signals. Recall your theory twice the distance means -6 db weaker. Do the math.

 

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KC0LNU @ Oct. 23 2002,10:23)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KB8DPN @ Oct. 22 2002,10:51)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">So I gotta know -- Did you talk to yourself?

[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
If you answer yourself on an amateur radio does that all your wires aren't quite connected?[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
And if you did answer yourself, should you send a QSL?

 

Last year a group of us OU-14 users experienced the same on the bird's machine everytime it passed over Northern California. After a few days of DF'ing, Larry WB6OMF and his crew located the source.

It was a digital simplex repeater (radio shack) set up on 145.975 by a group of bootlegging hunters. These morons put up the device for their private use while hunting. What made it worse is the way we operate when we access the bird (duplex). The users were hearing the echos of their echo coming back through the sattelite. Talking about deja vous.

 

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (w1it @ Oct. 28 2002,15:40)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (kf6iiu @ Oct. 28 2002,11:39)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Considering the number of lids out there this has got to be a recording of your signal.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Yes! Especially given all the cheap digital recorders out there. That is the most probable explanation and you'd accept it first unless there was something to make you think otherwise. Its called simplest first in science ( Occam's Razor)

Delays of a fraction of a second are easily explained by F layer round the planet propagation. I recall a number of years ago I was using a non-directional antenna on 17 and heard an Italian station almost as loud long path as short. Not multi echos however. Also there may be a way for the ionesphere to short term store and repeat signals without need for the signal propagating around the planet.

The idea of large refectors at millions of miles in space can't be supported with weak ham signals. Recall your theory twice the distance means -6 db weaker. Do the math.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Science? Someone mention "science?"

Anyone willing to pay for _science_? Instead of just flapping the jaws/fingers to say it's someone with a digital recorder?

Here ya' go. Quoted from Stanford U. Yeah, I asked them. Quote below.
---


A search of the library catalog turns up 6 hits for the keywords "delayed
echoes" (if spelled with the extra "e"):
http://socrates.stanford.edu/socrates/

The latest work, a 1974-1975 dissertation, "Long Delayed Radio Echoes" by
David Marsh Sears, seems to be what you want. (The Institute for Plasma
Research has, I believe, been reorganized out of existence by the
Electrical Engineering department.)

Copies can be ordered through University Microfilms:
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dxweb/
(When you eventually navigate to the Search page, the title words "Long
Delayed" are enough to find this thesis).


** Record: 1
Call number: 3781 1975 S
Author: Sears, David Marsh.
Title: Long delayed radio echoes.
Imprint: [Stanford, Calif.] 1974.
Physical Description: xxiv,219 p. illus.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.) - Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University,
1975.
Includes bibliographical references.
Subject (LC): Radio auroras.
----------------------------------------------------
Library Call Number Copy Location Status
----------------------------------------------------
ENG 3781 1975 S 1 THESES check shelf
----------------------------------------------------

** Record: 2
Call number: SHELVED BY ORGANIZATION & REPORT NO.
Technical rpt #: SUIPR 604
Organization: Stanford University. Institute for Plasma Research. SUIPR 604.
Title: Very Long Delayed Radio Echoes.
Imprint: November 1974.
Physical Description: 7 p.
Notes: GA 28819
Added author: Crawford, F. W.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Library Call Number Copy Location Status
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHYSICS SHELVED BY ORGANIZATION & REPORT NO. 1 TECH-RPTS check shelf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

** Record: 3
Call number: SHELVED BY ORGANIZATION & REPORT NO.
Technical rpt #: SUIPR 584
Organization: Stanford University. Institute for Plasma Research. SUIPR 584.
Title: Long Delayed Radio Echoes.
Imprint: November 1974.
Physical Description: 219 p.
Notes: GA 28819
NGL 05-020-176
N00014-67-A-0112-0044
Added author: Sears, David M.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Library Call Number Copy Location Status
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHYSICS SHELVED BY ORGANIZATION & REPORT NO. 1 TECH-RPTS check shelf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

** Record: 4
Call number: SHELVED BY ORGANIZATION & REPORT NO.
Technical rpt #: SUIPR 480
Organization: Stanford University. Institute for Plasma Research. SUIPR 480.
Title: Very long delayed radio echoes -- Annual report No. 1.
Imprint: June 1972.
Physical Description: 16 p.
Notes: GA-28819.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Library Call Number Copy Location Status
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHYSICS SHELVED BY ORGANIZATION & REPORT NO. 1 TECH-RPTS check shelf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

** Record: 5
Call number: SHELVED BY ORGANIZATION & REPORT NO.
Technical rpt #: SUIPR 410
Organization: Stanford University. Institute for Plasma Research. SUIPR 410.
Title: Very long delayed radio echoes -- annual report no. 2.
Imprint: Mar. 1971.
Physical Description: 12 p.
Notes: GA 4266.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Library Call Number Copy Location Status
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHYSICS SHELVED BY ORGANIZATION & REPORT NO. 1 TECH-RPTS check shelf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

** Record: 6
Call number: SUSEL-69038
Technical rpt #: SEL-69-038
Organization: Stanford University. Stanford Electronics Laboratories.
SEL-69-038.
Title: Long delayed echoes... radio's \"flying saucer\" effect.
Imprint: May 1969.
Physical Description: 6p.
Notes: Nonr-225(24)
NR-373-360
Nonr-225(64)
NR-088-019
ARPA-Order-196
Added author: Villard, O. G., Jr.
Graf, C. R.
Lomasney, J. M.
Organization: Stanford University. Stanford Electronics Laboratories.
Radioscience
Laboratory.
United States. Office of Naval Research.
United States. Army Signal Corps.
United States. Air Force.
United States. Navy.
United States. Advanced Research Projects Agency.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Library Call Number Copy Location Status
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ENG SUSEL-69038 1 TECH-RPTS check shelf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
Stewart Kramer, Rm.116
Varian Physics Bldg.
382 Via Pueblo Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-4060

--

If anyone wants to buy the reports you can find out it really did happen before you got into ham radio and learned about digikeyers, which didn't exist "way back then." Lots of you "it's someone with a digicorder" weren't even born back then. And there really _was_ life before you joined us!!

Science, anyone?

73
Ed

 

In 1958, while operating 15M CW one evening in Brunswick, Georgia, I heard my CQ de K4UNB coming back to me. This happened several seconds after I had stopped sending (Long Delayed Signal). 1957 & 1958 were great sun cycle years and I attribute the mysterious, somewhat echoed watery signal to the long path circulation around the globe, possibly many times, before it pathed backed to my location.

Although this was a strange experience, I'm sure that someone else didn't have a hand in it because it happened before digital or cassett recorders were on the scene. Also, we didn't have near as many lids or mean spirited people around Amateur Radio as there seems to be today.

 

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (k3pd @ Oct. 25 2002,13)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">
When it happens to me, I usually give a signal report of 59 and call QRZ again. [/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
So the question is... do you count that 59x2 in your score?  

 

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (W5HTW @ Oct. 29 2002,20:37)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">which didn't exist "way back then."   Lots of you "it's someone with a digicorder" weren't even born back then.  And there really _was_ life before you joined us!!  

Science, anyone?  

73
Ed[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Interesting, but I don't have permission to access any of these papers. It would seem to me most of the LDE heard are digitpeaters today. That assertion in no way says a real physical LDE phenomena doesn't exist.

That like saying psychic phenomenia doesn't exist because most psyhics are frauds.

But, I doubt without some very new physics you'll get an answer for the reasons I've stated. Inverse square law decreases the signal strength six db for every doubling of path length. This is one of the reasons radio is the only conceivable means of communicating with other planetary systems, but its very poor because of the large scale of the Universe and the rapid decline in signal strengths!

So if you could come up with some bizarre time reversals, perhaps the past (strong radio signal) somehow breaking into the future you'd have an LDE. Einstein believed light speed could not be exceeded by a material object, but an electro-magnetic signal such as radio isn't "marerial". I can't recall if they have found photons have mass, but to my knowledge if they do its very small. There is such a phenomenia as photon pressure. This is thought to possibly be exploited for space "sailing" starships.

If somehow a radio wave could exceed the speed of light, than BINGO it would travel backwards in space/time and maybe become an LDE ?
In any event the theories that these signals travel to the Sun and are reflected is silly. Even if they could they would be so weak on return, they could not be heard.

 

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">But, I doubt without some very new physics you'll get an answer for the reasons I've stated. Inverse square law decreases the signal strength six db for every doubling of path length. This is one of the reasons radio is the only conceivable means of communicating with other planetary systems, but its very poor because of the large scale of the Universe and the rapid decline in signal strengths!
[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
True only for an isotropic source (point source). With a properly shaped antenna (parabolic dish) the only dimunition in signal strength with distance is caused by the imperfections in the dish and internal radiation pressure. The "dish" at Areceibo can get to the other end of the Milky Way (takes a while, though&#33
</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">
Einstein believed light speed could not be exceeded by a material object, but an electro-magnetic signal such as radio isn't "marerial". I can't recall if they have found photons have mass, but to my knowledge if they do its very small. There is such a phenomenia as photon pressure. This is thought to possibly be exploited for space "sailing"  starships.

If somehow a radio wave could exceed the speed of light, than BINGO it would travel backwards in space/time and maybe become an LDE ?
[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
No, photons have zero mass. By definition, photons (light) travel at the speed of light. The notion of light travelling faster than light is a little confusing to me!

Particles that travel faster than light (tachyons) have been conjectured but no proof of their existence is forthcoming as yet. If they did exist, and caused an LDE, wouldn't YOUR signal be an echo of the tachyon signal, which happens BEFORE you send?

Hmmm.

Incidentally, one of the papers proposes a mechanism whereby a signal would be "trapped" in the ionosphere and could release it later, anywhere from seconds to hours later. It seems a little bogus to me. Nice convenient explanation, but the physics seemed very vague.

73

Larry K2KVS