Daily Archives: 2/22/2008

Where is this fax from?

I’m a teeny bit confused. The strong source of HF-FAX transmissions that i’ve been recording and decoding is broadcasting at night on 8.502 Mhz. I thought (based upon some link i can no longer find) that the transmissions were coming from Australia. But this website which has a list of HF-FAX transmitters suggests that it’s coming from Norfolk, VA.

There seems to be some genuine confusion. But for now, I’m going to assume it’s Norfolk, not Australia.

Addendum: Or, maybe, it’s the USCG in New Orleans. Sigh. In a way, that makes sense, because every map I seem to be getting shows the ocean off the Gulf of Mexico. It also matches up with this info from the USCG, which lists NMG as broadcasting on 8503.9, which means that I tune it on 8502.

Addendum2: Yep, it looks like New Orleans is where it’s at. Here’s a link to the schedule.. I’ve been doing my experiments around 11:00PM local, which is 07:00UTC. According to this schedule, at 07:25UTC, they rebroadcast the 72 hr surface forecast, which matches up nicely with what I received.

Addendum3: Here’s a GOES IR image from New Orleans.

GOES IR Image

Addendum4: Here’s the same image, in the pristine form you can get from the NOAA website:

Directly from the NOAA website…

Strange Sounds From Saturn

One of the greatest science fiction movie of all time is without doubt the 1956 classic Forbidden Planet. One of the reasons it was so successful was the oddly futuristic electronic music of Louse and Bebe Barron, true pioneers in electronic music. What’s really odd is that NASA’s latest recording of radio signals from the Cassini probe around Saturn sounds remarkably like that music. Check it out:

Radio sounds from Saturn

Addendum: I’m apparently not the only one who noticed the striking similarity.

Thanks to Mark, WA8SME for calling my attention to this.

Addendum: Here’s the spectrum of the sounds over time (going left to right in time, up in frequency).


Spectrum of the Saturn Emissions

Kind of trippy.