These signals normally show up on or near US Navy or Coast Guard frequencies, which seems to indicate that the signal is generated from a fault in their radio equipment. One possible explanation is that audio from a receiver is leaking into a transmitter when not in use. This will produce the "whale" sound if the receiver and transmitter are very close in frequency. If they are off a few hertz, a faster warbling sound will be heard. Try keying up a SSB transmitter with a receiver tuned to the same frequency. You'll get the same results. As the transmitter and receiver are tuned close to the same exact frequency, the warbling slows down and eventually becomes a "whale" sound. Theoretically it should be possible to get a solid tone, but in practice it's difficult to get a transmitter & receiver tuned well enough. Whenever someone keys up the microphone, the signal goes away until the transmitter shuts off, then starts wailing again. At any rate, it seems to be a good, inadvertent way of keeping the frequency clear between use.

One station I mentioned a couple years back is the as yet unidentified US military SIGINT digital/CW training station heard on 10225 and 16303. This station transmits simulated radio traffic in various digital modes and CW for copy by future SIGINT operators. The transmitter site is still a mystery, but the receiver site is probably located that the US Army Intelligence School at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona.

I've recently logged this station as active on 10225, but 16303 is still quiet. I'm not sure if it's a lack of good propagation or if they stopped using that frequency. The station has been very weak on 10225 lately here in Kansas, and I've managed to only get partial copy in some of the digital modes.

This station used to transmit for about two or three hours twice daily, sending simulated traffic which normally consists of letter and number code group messages. Just about any message format you could think of was sent, including occasional plaintext. Now, it seems to like to come on the air and transmit for a few minutes, then go silent for an hour or so.

If any of you readers out there who can copy different digital modes such as RTTY, FEC, and ASCII can hear this station, I'd appreciate it if you could let me know. This is a fun station to copy, and will give you lots of practice trying to find the different digital modes and speeds that it sends. Frequencies used are 10225 and 16303, but I've also logged it on 11122.7 and 16172 in the past.

The E10 Mossad stations can usually be heard here during evening/night hours, but the only thing I ever hear them doing is repeating the ID with a "2." We all know that the "2" means "no message." Is it just me, or have these stations been without traffic for a while? About a month ago, some of the E10 stations were heard passing message strings (e.g. KPA repeating KPA2Z3B) which may or may not have some special meaning. The last message I heard was from EZI on 6840 on the 12th of January.

By the time you read this, the 2002 SWL Winterfest in Kulpsville, PA will probably be in full swing. I hope to see many of you there.