UNID 4947 USB 1600 UTC 16 March 2017

[R4002]

Re-transmission of Declaration of War against Japan, very faint voice signal heard on remote SDR.  4947 kHz USB.  Appears to be on some sort of a loop... about 4-5 minutes long.

  
Loop restarted at 1630 UTC.  
Loop restarted at 1635 UTC. 

SIO 222 at best.

[TheRelayStation]

thats a great catch - did you get to record it and upload it to youtube ?
id be curious to hear it.

[Token]

This transmission began about 1600 UTC and eventually ended at about 1730 UTC.

The audio was an approximate 5 minute loop that was an edited version (hitting only the highlights) of the Dec 8, 1941, CBS transmission from the Joint Session of Congress session where the President requested a Declaration of War against Japan for the December 7, 1941, attacks on Pearl Harbor.  This loop repeated over and over for an hour and a half.

I have a recording of the transmission and I will post it later this evening.

While I don’t know what this transmission was, I suspect it was not a Pirate transmission.  It seems I have run across this transmission before, but I am not near my logs right now to see when and on what freq.  Similar transmission, such as JFKs “ask not” speech, have been noted on other frequencies before, possibly related to this.

T!

[Token]

OK, video on YT here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfO42qkOrF0&t=10s

I was just looking over my logs, and it seems the JFK "Ask Not" speech and FDRs "Fear itself" speech have both been used this way.  I should put video of them up also.  Regardless, I really doubt this is a pirate.

T!

[R4002]

If its not a pirate, what is it?

The frequency choice is interesting for sure, 60 meter broadcasting band (technically).

[Josh]

Sometimes int and mil agencies train radio ops with such transmissions, remember the Yosemite Sam bcasts from years ago?

[R4002]

I sure do remember Yosemite Sam! 

Military or intelligence services sound plausible

[Token]

SIGINT training always comes up as a possible source when these kinds of odd signals show up.  I always take such a suggestion with a grain of salt.  It is certainly possible, no doubt.  And I know it is absolutely true that SIGINTers do live, over air, training with canned signals.  But sometimes that is just too pat an answer.  "Look at this odd signal, it must be SIGINT training", and it is hard to suggest a more plausible source.

So I give SIGINT a solid, but guarded, "maybe".

Now, the fact of timing is interesting.  Looking at my logs these kinds of things seem to peak up in activity about every 6 to 9 months, with the majority of my log entries (but not all of them) over the last 7 or 8 years being in either early March or August - September time period.  If SIGINT training is a source, could we be looking at a school with a 6 to 9 month cycle time?  Not saying the school is 6 or 9 months long, but rather a new class starts about every 6 to 9 months?  Or might very possibly be a case of just too few data points in the log to be anything meaningful.

Just an idea.

T!

[Josh]

Also there can be multiple schools doing this kind of training, from the various branches and agencies. But who knows, it could be jr with a spyglass and a jetpack out playing radio dj.