Post by bobbunker on Sept 12, 2004 0:31:33 GMT -5
in the late '50s, I was a novice ham radio operator. One time I was sending out CQs, (general call for someone to answer,) and was listening for an answer. My entire message came back to me. I thought someone was taping it and sending it back, and was getting quite irritated.
My dad, an OLD time ham, and another ham were in the shack. The other ham looked out the window and noticed that my beam antenna was pointed directly at the rising moon, and the timing for the message coming back was about right for my signal bouncing off the moon.
The two older hams began relating about how they had picked up transmissions made many years before. They theorized that the original messages went out in space, hit a planet or other object and bounced back. (These transmissions were primarily in CW, since that was the method of choice for radio communications back in those days.)
My dad had countless stories about picking up code transmissions from time prior to WWII, long after the war was over. Ditto ship messages in CW (Morse Code) from years before.
Perhaps that explains some of the 'Nam pilots picking up messages from the Korean era. They were all operating on the same frequency as used during Korea, so they were picking up "bounced" messages. Time of "bouncing" would be based on whatever the distance from the space object that they were bounced off of. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, so time would be dependent on how far away the "reflecting" terrestrial object was from earth.
Additionally, there is a condition called "skip" in which the radio signal bounces off the atmosphere and comes to earth miles from where it started. That "bounce" was utilized to try to talk to radios on the other side of the world. This could explain reception by ships, planes, etc. far from the sending radio. (This would be essentially in real time, and almost instantaneous, due to the short distances in terms of the speed of light).
This may have been already discussed, but since I've just come on board, I didn't take the time to read all the threads that have already been established.
My dad, an OLD time ham, and another ham were in the shack. The other ham looked out the window and noticed that my beam antenna was pointed directly at the rising moon, and the timing for the message coming back was about right for my signal bouncing off the moon.
The two older hams began relating about how they had picked up transmissions made many years before. They theorized that the original messages went out in space, hit a planet or other object and bounced back. (These transmissions were primarily in CW, since that was the method of choice for radio communications back in those days.)
My dad had countless stories about picking up code transmissions from time prior to WWII, long after the war was over. Ditto ship messages in CW (Morse Code) from years before.
Perhaps that explains some of the 'Nam pilots picking up messages from the Korean era. They were all operating on the same frequency as used during Korea, so they were picking up "bounced" messages. Time of "bouncing" would be based on whatever the distance from the space object that they were bounced off of. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, so time would be dependent on how far away the "reflecting" terrestrial object was from earth.
Additionally, there is a condition called "skip" in which the radio signal bounces off the atmosphere and comes to earth miles from where it started. That "bounce" was utilized to try to talk to radios on the other side of the world. This could explain reception by ships, planes, etc. far from the sending radio. (This would be essentially in real time, and almost instantaneous, due to the short distances in terms of the speed of light).
This may have been already discussed, but since I've just come on board, I didn't take the time to read all the threads that have already been established.
