[CQ-Contest] The Old WoodPecker

[Zack Widup]

Fascinating, Brett.

Supposedly ZC4 was also the souirce of the shortwave spy numbers
transmissions from the station known as "the Lincolnshire Poacher." It
disappeared about a year ago and hasn't been heard since.

When I was in grad school, the research station where I spent a lot of time
had a vertical incidence ionosonde. It swept from 3 to 30 MHz but was
programmed to skip the ham bands and WWV frequencies. But it was never on
one frequency very long, anyway. It swept that whole range in about 30
seconds.
Where was the original Russian Woodpecker of the 1970's located?

73, Zack W9SZ


On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 4:56 AM, VR2BrettGraham <vr2bg at harts.org.hk> wrote:

> N7MAL said:
>
> >I have been humbled, but first thanks for the reports. Apparently it was
> >heard from the Atlantic to the Pacific generally at the same signal level.
> >While it was on it wiped the middle-level and low-level sigs, from Asia,
> >during the AA Contest. The really strong sigs were not effected. I have
> not
> >yet heard from anyone on the AA side of the pacific.
> >
> >Now about being humbled: 2 different guys reported the signal strength to
> me
> >and both basically said they had only heard stories about the woodpecker
> >years ago from 'old-timers' in their local radio clubs. I was able to
> >identify the signal within 30 seconds by listening to it and tuning
> through
> >it. I really feel like an 'ole-fart' now.
> >If anyone on the Asia side of the Pacific please report it.
>
> And before that:
>
> >Late Fri nite/early Sat morning the Old Woodpecker was heard for more than
> >an hour in the CW portion of 40 meters. It really hurt the AA Contest
> until
> >it quit. It was more than 40khz wide with that unmistakable pulse rate.
> >I'm curious if others heard it and if there is any definite info where it
> is
> >coming from. It's a real 40M CW contest killer.....
>
> If it's on 40 or 80m, it's probably the Chinese from Hainan.
>
> If it's on 30m or above, it's probably the British from ZC4.
>
> The Chinese have tended to be wider & stay on for long periods
> of time, whilst the Brits are narrow & more agile (following the
> MUF & one would like to think, trying to reduce the harm they're
> causing since they have some semblance of a conscience, or
> simply two decades of complaints can make a difference, albeit
> a small one).
>
> Pulse rate is not a good way to identify the source, as both the
> Chinese & the Brits use more than one.
>
> OTHR on certain frequencies on 20m might be the Ukrainians or
> the Iranians.
>
> And on 10m - if it ever opens again - it's back to either the Brits
> or the Chinese from Xisha in the South China Sea.
>
> Something I didn't know, despite having known OTHR during my
> entire amateur life, is that the British have been at it since 1986
> from ZC4.  The Chinese only came on the scene in 2004.  The
> Russians are apparently back at it again, but nothing of the scale
> back before 1986.
>
> Before too long, general rules like the ones above will no longer
> apply, as Australia slipped in some footnotes legitimizing use of
> 3.7-4 & 10.1-10.15 Mc for their OTHR.
>
> Plenty of reports of the various OTHRs being submitted to IARU
> Monitoring System in Regions 1 & 3, as well as spots on the
> clusters.  In IARU Region 2 - which consists of north, central &
> south America - there's been only one report of OTHR in all of
> 2009 & from what I can see anything spotted from there presumes
> it's the Chinese, even if it was probably the Brits.
>
> All the OTHRs have been reported to the ITU Monitoring System,
> which unlike IARU can take action.  Interestingly, the Brits have
> grassed themselves to ITU-MS, but so far nothing seems to have
> come from it.
>
> Any country that operates OTHR on the amateur bands is in
> breach of the obligations undertaken for membership in the ITU,
> making it an electromagnetic pariah state if you will.
>
> And I would suggest as long as the first-world continues to
> operate OTHR on the amateur bands, then everybody else will
> follow suit.
>
> Discussion of OTHR here will achieve little, what is needed are
> more complaints of these & other intruders to be submitted to
> your telecommunications authority & letting IARU MS (via your
> national member-society) know what you've done.
>
> If anything, please spot OTHR on the clusters, as IARU R3 MS
> harvests intruder spots for inclusion in its reports - active hams
> as the greatest stakeholders could very well be the only way
> we have to ever get anywhere with establishing there's a problem
> here that needs to be sorted.
>
> 73, ex-VR2BG/p (aka Canary In The Coal Mine).
> OTHR presentation video: mms://max-server.net/2008_vr2bg
> OTHR presentation: http://home.pacific.net.hk/~vr2bg/hrsa/apdxc-othr.pdf
> What it's like here "on point": http://home.pacific.net.hk/~vr2bg/hrsa
>
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