[00:34.980 --> 00:46.740]  Let me tell you a story When I was young, I had dreams of glory
[00:49.210 --> 00:55.140]  All these mistakes Seemed to come like a flood
[00:57.100 --> 01:09.400]  Until my days, my days, they were done But I don't want to feel like a wishful thinking
[01:09.400 --> 01:14.760]  Pick myself up and move to the beat of my heart and my soul
[01:14.760 --> 01:17.060]  Sing a song for the dreamer
[01:33.040 --> 01:38.580]  Hello, I'm Pancake, and this is So You Got an SDR, Common Signals and the Wiki.
[01:38.620 --> 01:41.720]  And I'm doing this live, so it might be a little bit spicy.
[01:45.000 --> 01:50.400]  So don't mind if the OBS window shows up, because I couldn't get the window capture to work.
[01:50.400 --> 01:55.240]  Anyway, what I do. I stare at signals a lot.
[01:55.240 --> 02:03.580]  I have an SDR Play RSP-1A, which goes from 1 kHz to 2 GHz with about 8 MHz bandwidth.
[02:04.200 --> 02:14.940]  And with it, I use a very large delta loop up above my house, which is tuned for around 40 meters.
[02:14.940 --> 02:26.580]  And I also have a 6x6 foot square loop up in a tree, which is used for low VHF. It's tuned for something like 45 MHz.
[02:26.580 --> 02:32.080]  I have a general class license, which is important if you're doing radio things.
[02:32.260 --> 02:36.440]  And I got my technician's somewhere around when I was 13.
[02:36.440 --> 02:47.660]  And I'm biased towards HF. I much prefer HF, because of where I am. I'm in a semi-rural area. It's much easier for me to set up things.
[02:49.160 --> 02:57.220]  And also, because I'm out here, I have very little VHF and UHF capabilities, because there's just no signals up there.
[02:57.260 --> 03:03.500]  I barely even have cell signal here. I had to ask somebody to give me a picture of the cell signal.
[03:03.500 --> 03:12.920]  And I love the propagation dynamics of HF and low VHF. It's very interesting with ionosphere and sporadic E.
[03:13.120 --> 03:23.400]  And I contribute a lot to the Signal Identification Wiki and their Discord, as well as interact with Younghams through YARC, which is the Young Amateur Radio Club.
[03:23.400 --> 03:31.600]  And I have not made a PowerPoint since middle school, nor have I done a presentation since high school. So, it's been a while, so bear with me.
[03:32.620 --> 03:41.420]  So, what I hope to accomplish with this PowerPoint is show you that there's a lot more signals out there than just amateur radio signals and public communication stuff.
[03:42.280 --> 03:45.380]  I'm checking my phone for the Twitch chat.
[03:45.380 --> 03:54.920]  And we'll also show you a bunch of common signals that are asked of the Signal Identification Wiki.
[03:55.080 --> 04:02.920]  Because people, you know, go through their SDR, there is a lot to look at, especially if you have HF capabilities.
[04:03.360 --> 04:05.920]  So, I'll show some signals that are commonly asked about.
[04:07.100 --> 04:13.700]  And also, at the end, I will give you a brief idea of how to contribute to the Signal Identification Wiki.
[04:14.260 --> 04:17.400]  Which I quite like helping with.
[04:17.440 --> 04:23.080]  So, I'm going to start at VLF, LF, and MF, which is 0-3 MHz.
[04:23.080 --> 04:29.160]  Yes, technically I know there's ELF and ULF, but we're starting at 0.
[04:30.160 --> 04:34.340]  And since we're starting at 0, we're going to start with the human resonances.
[04:34.340 --> 04:46.020]  Which you probably will not be able to receive, because you need a pretty hefty antenna to be receiving that, because it's at 7.8 Hz.
[04:46.020 --> 04:50.720]  These are the resonances of the actual magnetosphere of Earth.
[04:51.920 --> 04:54.160]  So, they're pretty interesting.
[04:54.160 --> 05:01.600]  If you were to be able to generate a signal at that low, you'd be able to hear it ping, basically, the magnetosphere.
[05:01.600 --> 05:05.380]  It's a pretty interesting idea, but good luck doing that.
[05:06.220 --> 05:11.480]  And moving up from there, we have the Alpha Navigation Beacons, which are in Russia.
[05:11.500 --> 05:15.900]  They're used for hyperbolic navigation purposes.
[05:16.940 --> 05:20.500]  And they're at 11.9 kHz, I have a picture of it.
[05:20.500 --> 05:24.000]  The little bar on the left, you can barely see the little beeps.
[05:24.180 --> 05:27.520]  Unfortunately, I don't have an antenna that can receive those anymore.
[05:29.800 --> 05:33.020]  Moving along, we have submarine transmitters.
[05:33.020 --> 05:36.840]  There are many of submarine transmitters around the world.
[05:36.840 --> 05:40.060]  Most of them are between 16 to 26 kHz.
[05:40.060 --> 05:43.800]  They're 300 MHz wide, you can see them in that picture in the middle.
[05:44.380 --> 05:47.940]  They're the big, long stripes going up vertically.
[05:48.180 --> 05:54.920]  The strong one is Jim Creek, which is NLK at 24.8 kHz.
[05:54.920 --> 05:58.240]  They use minimum shift keying. They sound pretty neat.
[05:58.640 --> 06:00.660]  But you can't get anything out of them.
[06:00.660 --> 06:02.800]  And also down here, of course, there's lightning.
[06:03.560 --> 06:07.700]  Which I like to listen to. It sounds kind of like crackling and pops.
[06:07.960 --> 06:09.600]  Pretty interesting.
[06:10.980 --> 06:13.920]  And moving along, we also have...
[06:14.640 --> 06:18.740]  The lowest frequency time signals are all down here as well.
[06:18.740 --> 06:24.100]  In North America, it's WWVB, which is at 60 kHz.
[06:24.100 --> 06:31.060]  And on a good day, I can actually receive the JJY40 kHz.
[06:31.060 --> 06:33.820]  Which is all the way in Japan.
[06:34.000 --> 06:40.420]  And of course, Germany, Russia, France, and China also have these really low frequency time signals.
[06:44.820 --> 06:49.100]  And below 9 kHz, there's no allocations whatsoever.
[06:49.100 --> 06:52.000]  There's some people that actually try and transmit that low.
[06:52.000 --> 06:53.620]  Which I think is ridiculous.
[06:53.900 --> 07:01.320]  But DK7FC, if I remember correctly, is a call sign to look up if you're interested in super low stuff.
[07:01.420 --> 07:06.380]  There's also the 2200m band and the 630m amateur bands.
[07:06.380 --> 07:11.520]  Those are extremely difficult to transmit on.
[07:11.520 --> 07:14.040]  But it is quite possible, and people do do it.
[07:14.180 --> 07:20.600]  And there's actually a list of 630m transmitting people that you can find online.
[07:20.600 --> 07:23.620]  I don't remember how to find it, but there is one.
[07:23.760 --> 07:29.500]  In fact, there is... work all states is actually possible on 630m.
[07:29.500 --> 07:36.060]  But also, when you're down at VLF ranges and slightly above, there's just loads of power noise.
[07:36.060 --> 07:41.220]  So you have to be somewhere semi-rural in order to be able to really receive anything.
[07:42.280 --> 07:45.180]  And moving along...
[07:45.180 --> 07:53.600]  Moving up a frequency sum at about 190kHz, you'll start running into non-directional beacons.
[07:53.840 --> 08:01.200]  Which are beacons that just transmit three-letter codes in Norse, or two-letter, I believe.
[08:01.280 --> 08:07.280]  And at that link, you can find a massive list of all of them all across the world.
[08:07.280 --> 08:10.140]  These are for direction finding.
[08:10.660 --> 08:15.020]  If you get lost in the woods or something, I don't know.
[08:15.020 --> 08:17.200]  Oh, and ships. Ships use them, of course.
[08:18.040 --> 08:24.500]  I once spent like an hour trying to decode one that was barely readable in the noise.
[08:24.500 --> 08:28.740]  And it just turned out to be from the town 10 miles away. It was disappointing.
[08:30.360 --> 08:34.020]  Differential GPS is another thing that's over here. Ships use them.
[08:34.040 --> 08:36.600]  It's supplementary to normal GPS.
[08:36.740 --> 08:39.620]  It helps correct the GPS.
[08:42.360 --> 08:45.980]  By fixing the times or something. I don't quite remember.
[08:46.200 --> 08:50.980]  Navtex is also here at 518kHz.
[08:51.300 --> 08:57.000]  You can figure out and get maritime notifications.
[08:57.200 --> 09:02.620]  Stuff like, you need to turn in how much halibut you've caught.
[09:04.140 --> 09:08.500]  And there's also long-wave radio broadcasts, which there are none of in North America.
[09:08.500 --> 09:11.400]  That's kind of disappointing, and I haven't been able to receive any.
[09:11.400 --> 09:13.720]  Most of them are in Europe, to my knowledge.
[09:14.360 --> 09:17.520]  But it's basically just like short-wave, but way lower.
[09:18.720 --> 09:23.400]  You probably can't even find radios that pick up long-wave... well, normal radios.
[09:26.300 --> 09:29.620]  And the AM broadcast band is, of course, down this low.
[09:29.620 --> 09:34.220]  And it still exists. You might not be able to pick up any in your car, but it still exists.
[09:34.220 --> 09:47.240]  And in fact, if you look at this image around 1.5MHz there, you can see a signal that has rectangular stripes along its edge.
[09:47.240 --> 09:49.700]  And that's actually AM radio HD.
[09:50.360 --> 09:56.280]  And that can actually be decoded, I believe. I'm pretty sure that one can be decoded.
[09:56.280 --> 10:03.460]  And on a really good day from here, I can actually pick up AM radio stations as far as Japan and Korea.
[10:03.460 --> 10:05.380]  Which is pretty interesting.
[10:05.380 --> 10:14.460]  There is also a DX group for AM radio stations here in the Seattle area.
[10:14.460 --> 10:18.720]  Which has actually picked up stations as far as Iran.
[10:18.800 --> 10:20.200]  Unbelievably.
[10:20.840 --> 10:26.300]  Using the grey line propagation of the ionosphere around sunset.
[10:26.300 --> 10:30.400]  Which I think is ridiculous, considering the farthest I've heard is Japan.
[10:32.100 --> 10:34.280]  So now we're entering HF.
[10:34.480 --> 10:37.080]  HF is 3 to 30MHz.
[10:37.660 --> 10:44.580]  And the important thing about HF is that HF is completely affected by the ionosphere.
[10:44.580 --> 10:49.620]  And the ionosphere, if you're unaware, bounces signals all across the planet.
[10:49.620 --> 10:54.800]  On a good day, you can actually get a signal across most of the planet.
[10:55.750 --> 11:01.150]  This image here is a time lapse from 5AM to 10AM that I made.
[11:01.380 --> 11:12.010]  To show that as the sun rises, the D-layer of the ionosphere starts absorbing frequencies below about 10MHz.
[11:14.420 --> 11:19.760]  And above 10MHz becomes better at daytime.
[11:19.760 --> 11:21.020]  Anyway.
[11:21.020 --> 11:26.600]  But you could do a whole giant massive talk about the ionosphere, which I would like to do someday.
[11:27.780 --> 11:33.620]  But when people get HF, one of the first things they ask about is number stations.
[11:34.040 --> 11:38.040]  Because everybody's heard of number stations, especially the Russian ones.
[11:38.040 --> 11:40.540]  And I always tell them, just go to Pryom.
[11:40.540 --> 11:50.100]  They have all of the information you could ever possibly need about number stations.
[11:50.100 --> 11:56.620]  Some of them are in Morse, some of them have voice, some of them are MFSK, some of them are FSK, MN.
[11:56.700 --> 12:04.720]  For some reason, Cuba does theirs in RDFT, which is Redundant Digital File Transfer.
[12:04.720 --> 12:09.740]  It's very odd that image is of the RDFT signal that HM01 sends out.
[12:09.740 --> 12:17.440]  There's also letter stations, which kind of just show up as random Morse code.
[12:17.440 --> 12:21.800]  It's very weird. And you just try and decode it, and it's gibberish.
[12:21.820 --> 12:28.440]  And you can find more about those on the Enigma 2000 newsletter, which is made by SignalShed.
[12:28.980 --> 12:33.400]  And HM01 is run from Cuba, and they make mistakes a lot.
[12:33.560 --> 12:39.520]  Sometimes you can hear Windows noises. It's very odd, considering it's for spies.
[12:40.860 --> 12:44.060]  But, uh, yep.
[12:45.320 --> 12:50.080]  Also in HM, there's many, many radars, over-the-horizon radars.
[12:50.480 --> 12:55.740]  They go quite far, and there's many varieties of them.
[12:55.740 --> 13:00.760]  There's three images of radars that we have yet unnamed.
[13:01.540 --> 13:06.380]  Most people will run into the top two images.
[13:06.600 --> 13:12.580]  That top-left image is the type of radar I believe China and Russia use.
[13:12.900 --> 13:18.420]  We're not entirely sure. It's very hard to track these down, especially if you want to get a name for them.
[13:18.520 --> 13:26.980]  But those sometimes intrude on, like, the 20-meter and 40-meter band, and people get annoyed by that.
[13:26.980 --> 13:29.320]  But it's not really a huge issue.
[13:29.320 --> 13:41.580]  And that bottom image is actually, I believe, a pseudo-random noise radar, which they use very complex interferometry to get the signals out of.
[13:41.800 --> 13:48.240]  And if you were to look really, really hard at that image, you can see the radar code embedded in it.
[13:48.620 --> 13:57.580]  But there's other types of radars, too. There's relocatable ones, which show up as little rectangles that move all over the place.
[13:58.440 --> 14:02.840]  They're pretty annoying. I'm checking my things here.
[14:04.160 --> 14:08.260]  I don't know what an audio issue it is. Should be fine.
[14:11.680 --> 14:20.080]  Yeah, so the relocatable ones, they show up as little rectangles. They change frequencies a lot and sweeping speeds a lot.
[14:20.080 --> 14:27.980]  The top right image is of a probe for one of the other larger radars going across the band.
[14:28.060 --> 14:34.820]  And the bottom right one is a container-type radar, probably, which is one of the types that Russia uses.
[14:38.610 --> 14:50.490]  There's also research radars. CODAR is a type of radar. It's in that left image there, which is used to bounce off of ocean waves to get their height.
[14:50.490 --> 15:00.910]  And SuperDARN, which is the Super Dual Aurora Radar Network, is an educational... well, it's used by universities, so academic is a better word.
[15:00.910 --> 15:18.750]  So it's an academic radar that they use. They blast it up towards the North Pole to get a radar of plasma convection, if I remember correctly, for aurora-related things.
[15:18.750 --> 15:29.390]  There's also HAARP, which I've actually caught HAARP transmitting. That middle image there is some type of carrier that they were doing research with.
[15:31.310 --> 15:43.430]  HAARP does not actually do weather control like some conspiracy people say. In fact, you can tweet the head scientist on Twitter. He's a cool guy.
[15:43.430 --> 16:04.930]  And then there's Ionisons as well, which show up as diagonal sweeps that go from 1 to 40 MHz about. And those receive echoes from ionosphere layers, and you can get a rough estimate of propagation with them as well.
[16:05.590 --> 16:32.270]  And if you have everything set up, you can actually receive your own versions and make your own ionosphere graphs, but that requires a GPS-locked thing for perfect timing. It's very complicated, but interesting if you're capable of doing it. There's a talk that you can find for that somewhere.
[16:33.050 --> 17:00.270]  There's also on HF a ton of different military signals, and there's a lot of them. Some of them are overly complex, like the Japanese slot machine on the left, or the MIL-STD-188-110 Appendix A-16 Tone, which is in the middle. It's got weird diagonal stripes that show up.
[17:00.270 --> 17:22.010]  And they change these all of the time. In fact, in Europe, there's a guy that tries to decode these, just posting bits and stuff. You can't really get anything out of these unless you're staring at bits for the rest of your life, because they're all super encrypted.
[17:22.010 --> 17:29.890]  That fourth image is CIS-12, which sometimes intrudes on the 20-meter band, like it is in that image.
[17:30.690 --> 17:44.630]  There's also the Panther modem signals, which show up as little data bursts. I believe there's six data bursts when they're establishing a connection, and then after that, they just kind of go everywhere.
[17:44.630 --> 18:06.170]  And there's also HF, Global Communications System, which is by the United States Air Force. And that's actually just talking, but they say numbers and letters and stuff, and they have them using code names. You'll catch that at 4.724 MHz, usually.
[18:07.150 --> 18:26.830]  There's other ones, too. They go through the whole system. I guess that could be a number station, but one of the signals that's most asked about is STANAG-4285, because that's the second image that shows up all over the place, and everybody uses it.
[18:26.830 --> 18:50.170]  But the thing to know with it is that it is 2.7 kHz in bandwidth, and if you know what an ACF is, it has an ACF of 1,100, if I remember correctly. Also, on HF, there's a ton of time signals.
[18:50.170 --> 19:10.370]  WWV is well known at 2.55, 10, 15, 20, and 25 MHz. And, of course, there's also WWVH that shows up, but Canada, China, and Russia also have their own time signals at those frequencies listed there.
[19:10.370 --> 19:36.050]  The Canadian one's kind of interesting, because it has a modem beep noise. Well, it's not really a beep, but modem data burst, so you can sync your modem, or rather, you know, it can be received through the modem. That second image there, the tall, skinny one, was the time that the Russian one showed up at the 9.996 MHz. That one's kind of neat, it's got a lot of beeps.
[19:36.050 --> 19:56.870]  And if you're unaware, also, the WWV and WWVH one, they use separate tones. So if you see two tones, like in that image there, I believe it's 500 and 600 Hz tones, then that means you're receiving both of them at the same time.
[19:56.870 --> 20:17.140]  And also, the 510 and 15 MHz ones at WWVH in Hawaii are aimed west for islands like the Philippines and Guam and all those other islands that the United States sort of has a claim on. Well, not a claim, but, you know, where they occupy.
[20:19.180 --> 20:35.980]  And also, the WWVH has a female voice, where WWVH has a male voice. There's other things that they broadcast, such as space weather and stuff. You can find a list of that. And they also show the schedule on the hour, if I remember correctly.
[20:36.700 --> 21:02.440]  And obviously, there's shortwave radio on HF. Some people don't realize that this still exists, but it definitely does. There's only a couple stations in North America, and if you are listening to a station and you're not sure what it is, shortwaveradio.com or short-wave.info are very good resources to find out what you're listening to.
[21:02.440 --> 21:26.820]  And it's great for estimating propagation. Sometimes, you know, Greece will show up at 9,420 kHz. That one, they play some fun music. But it also means that, you know, the ionosphere might have an opening up to Europe around 10 MHz on the 30 meter band. So it might be time to try some FT8 there.
[21:26.820 --> 21:51.180]  But there's also DRM, which is a digital radio signal. And you can decode those with a program called Dream. You generally need a pretty good signal-to-noise ratio to decode these, because it's digital information. About 14 dB or higher is probably what's needed.
[21:51.180 --> 22:10.460]  And also, you want to make sure that it doesn't have any horrific fading. Otherwise, you know, you're losing data in the house. And you can see DRM in both of the images. The top right image is when the Russians were testing a DRM station on their east coast.
[22:11.140 --> 22:29.700]  Which, for some reason, played like a Matrix song every time they turned off for the day. That was interesting. But you can find more info on the schedules at hfcc.org. I personally like DRM.
[22:30.900 --> 22:53.860]  There's other signals on HF, of course. Modems. You've got Paktor modems. There's also the HFDL, which is for planes flying over the ocean. There's a program called Sorcerer that's very good at decoding those. And you can get their location and small messages, I guess, from those.
[22:53.860 --> 23:10.220]  There's GMDSS, which is for boats lost at sea. Well, not really lost, but they're doing things out there. And that's for setting up calls between boats and also if they're in distress.
[23:11.420 --> 23:28.600]  ALE, which is in the bottom left image, is an MFK signal. It goes doodly doodly doodly doodly do. You'll know it when you hear it. It's about 2 or 3 seconds long. WEFAX is a common popular signal that people will receive and those can get you some interesting weather images, like in the bottom right.
[23:28.600 --> 23:57.240]  Sinotor B is also known as NAVTEX. You can get maritime notifications, which the ones I receive are usually, hey, Russia's doing a missile test in this area. Don't take your boat out there. It's interesting. NFC is also technically a HF signal. And you'll find that at 13.56 MHz if you can, you know, receive it because they only go a couple feet.
[23:57.240 --> 24:23.340]  There's also experimental radio stock trading, interestingly. Supposedly, it goes from London to New York or Chicago or I don't remember what other place. But people have been experimenting with that because it's slightly faster by, like, a couple milliseconds to do radio than to send it over the internet.
[24:23.340 --> 24:52.300]  There's also experimental markers, which they make a honking noise four times and then a three-letter Morse code, which will tell you where it's from. The other image I have here, the fourth image on the top row, is of the SOV modem, which is technically a military signal, I believe, which is from South Africa. That's worth noting because it's a very funky image. A funky signal that shows up at 4347.
[24:58.460 --> 25:12.860]  There's also lightning on HF. If you ever see this type of thing on your SDR, you need to unplug your antenna, like, immediately. This was across the state when this was happening, but it was still pretty hefty.
[25:12.860 --> 25:29.380]  Lightning can show up all the way up to about 14 MHz, probably higher if it's close, and can just absolutely ruin your waterfall. But it does make neat noises sometimes.
[25:29.380 --> 25:48.940]  And of course, there's amateur radio all over HF. There's the 160 meter, which is technically MF, but there's also the 80 meter, 60 meter, 30 meter, 20 meter, 17 meter, 15, 12, 10 meters as well.
[25:48.940 --> 26:12.700]  But I'm glad this image was of Field Day 2019. There's a ton of Morse code flying around, and then you've got a row of PSK-31, mostly, and then two rows of FT-8 there. We get asked about FT-8 a lot on the signal identification wiki, because people don't realize what it is. And it comes in strong, of course. Some people can receive FT-8 even without an antenna.
[26:14.900 --> 26:40.260]  And so, now we are at VHF, and I'm sort of running slow, but VHF, this is the land of Sporadic E. This is what Sporadic E can do to a 6 meter signal. The left image is a normal day, and the right image was a fantastic day for 6 meters. But that's just an idea of what Sporadic E does.
[26:40.260 --> 27:03.320]  But in the low VHF band, you'll find public utility comms for rural areas, military signals, which are surprisingly just normal analog voice, and you're allowed to receive them. Doesn't seem like you should, but you can. That top left image, I believe, was two helicopters out for doing target practice.
[27:03.320 --> 27:19.820]  And also, there's SYNCARS, which is another military signal, and it uses packets that fly around because it's a frequency hopping spread spectrum. So it uses packets that fly around at 100 packets per second. It looks pretty neat.
[27:21.360 --> 27:41.060]  You won't be able to receive that, obviously, because it's super encrypted stuff. There's also remote telemetry stations that use meteor scatter propagation, like SNOTEL. SNOTEL is that image in the middle, which is snow telemetry. They have stations up in the mountains.
[27:41.800 --> 28:04.420]  And when a meteor comes through, the signal will get received, hopefully, from the ionization trail. The signal can bounce off of that. There's also still NTSC stations. There's none in the United States. There's a couple in Canada along the border, as well as a couple in Mexico and the Caribbean Islands that still exist.
[28:04.420 --> 28:25.620]  There's people that try and receive these, because you can receive an NTSC signal much further than the new digital television signals. And there's also the PRIMEX wireless clock syncing signal, which they use at schools and stuff to sync all of the clocks.
[28:26.540 --> 28:34.900]  Also, older remote control toys still use low VHF, somewhere around 70 MHz, usually.
[28:35.960 --> 28:53.720]  And that bottom image is actually an NTSC signal that was generated from a VCR and is being decoded by TVSharp. The guy that sent me that image is one of the guys that likes to do NTSC DXing.
[28:53.720 --> 29:05.600]  It's becoming very hard to do. But he once received a signal in Canada, all the way in Texas. And we were watching I Love Lucy, if I remember correctly.
[29:06.040 --> 29:22.860]  And also there's, of course, the FM broadcast band. If you look at this image, the rectangles on the sides of the FM broadcast signal are HD radio. I believe there's a program to decode these.
[29:22.860 --> 29:33.700]  It's a proprietary signal, so I'm not sure. But those are signals that newer cars can receive. A bit clearer audio than normal FM signal.
[29:35.020 --> 29:53.200]  And above this, you start running into the airband, which there is VOR, which is used at small airports and such to get bearings on planes from their funky signal. It uses the phase correlation something. It's very complicated.
[29:53.200 --> 30:03.120]  There's, of course, airband comms in A cars. If you are interested in airband stuff, definitely look up what's used by the local airports.
[30:04.000 --> 30:15.040]  A cars can be used to track planes, if I remember correctly, and also sends messages from the airports to planes.
[30:15.540 --> 30:24.060]  And, of course, there is the NOAA Meteor and Orbcom satellites as well in this area, around 137 MHz.
[30:26.120 --> 30:34.440]  People ask about these a lot. They are very popular to receive the images from NOAA and Meteor. You can get some very nice satellite images.
[30:35.120 --> 30:51.100]  ISS is also over here. They are in the 2 meter band, usually. And, of course, right now they have been doing SSTV from there. They are much stronger than other VHF satellites.
[30:51.100 --> 30:56.700]  NOAA is only 2 watts or 1 watt or something, and ISS has been using 50 watts.
[31:00.200 --> 31:13.380]  And, of course, there is the military VHF sats, around 260 MHz, that have become known because they have been hijacked by pirates, usually Brazilians and Russians, from what I understand.
[31:13.400 --> 31:22.080]  They are just linear transponders. So, if you know the input frequency, you can just transmit onto them. However, that's very illegal. Don't do it.
[31:22.080 --> 31:24.340]  And I don't even know what they are.
[31:24.540 --> 31:34.560]  There is also MILSTAR, which uses an FHSS, Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum, signal, which is the image on the right. It sounds really dang neat.
[31:36.860 --> 31:41.880]  That middle image is another satellite, which I don't know what exactly it is.
[31:41.880 --> 31:57.000]  But, the left image, if you find 260 MHz, just like a solid rectangle, that's probably one of those satellites that has been used.
[31:57.540 --> 32:05.120]  Other signals in VHF include ATSC, which you can decode with GNU Radio. It's very CPU intensive.
[32:05.120 --> 32:13.960]  One of the distinctive features of the ATSC signal is that it has a carrier on the left, which, as you can see, is just a little white line in that image.
[32:14.840 --> 32:17.760]  As well as it being 6 MHz across.
[32:18.180 --> 32:29.120]  There is also, of course, the NOAA Weather Radio, which is pretty neat. If you have a good antenna, you can generally receive a few of them.
[32:29.180 --> 32:33.200]  Like, I can receive four of them from here.
[32:36.120 --> 32:47.400]  And we've reached UHF, which is 300 MHz and 3 GHz, but I'm stopping at 2 GHz because that's the general maximum frequency that a lot of common SDRs use.
[32:48.360 --> 33:00.260]  And in UHF, there's no longer anything to do with the ionosphere. You end up with tropospheric propagation, which is very complicated and has to do with air density.
[33:01.140 --> 33:11.520]  And most of UHF is for LMR, land mobile radio stuff, which you need to look up your local frequencies for.
[33:11.520 --> 33:26.600]  As I was learning to make this presentation, there's a lot more frequency bands that people use for public safety comms than what is around here.
[33:26.600 --> 33:33.780]  Around here, we only have stuff at 150 MHz and 460 MHz, or whatever it is.
[33:33.820 --> 33:44.560]  But there's also radio stuff at 700, 800, and 500 MHz in some cities. You should really look up what is used in your county or city.
[33:44.560 --> 33:53.160]  And there's digital voice modes, like P25DMR, NXDN, DSTAR, Fusion, and in Europe, there's Tetra.
[33:53.540 --> 34:06.600]  They all look like fuzzy lines, and you can decode those with DSD+, or if you use the SDR Sharp, I think there's specifically a plugin for Tetra.
[34:07.820 --> 34:20.460]  But with public safety comms, the dispatch signal is usually analog, but everything else is going to be digital and using trunking, which we'll get to.
[34:20.680 --> 34:29.380]  GMRS and FRS is walkie-talkies in businesses. Licensed channels can be encrypted, others can't be.
[34:29.380 --> 34:43.540]  And that law code there at the bottom allows you to listen to everything, as long as you're not breaking encryption.
[34:46.260 --> 34:53.520]  Because it's perfectly legal to listen to these things. It doesn't seem like it, but it is, unless they make an attempt to encrypt it.
[34:54.280 --> 35:02.700]  Trunked radio systems, like I said, a lot of police and public safety stuff will use trunked radio systems.
[35:02.700 --> 35:07.780]  This could be an entire talk in and of itself, if you look at these images.
[35:07.780 --> 35:23.000]  The ones that are on all the time are the control channels, and then the control channels tell the radios what frequencies to go to for the other voice channels, and it hops around.
[35:23.520 --> 35:33.160]  And you can use DSD Plus with Fastlane, or SDR Trunk is another program you can use for trunked radio systems.
[35:33.160 --> 35:39.700]  These can be very complicated, and like I said, you can do a whole talk on just trunked radio systems.
[35:41.120 --> 35:47.760]  The control channel sounds different, usually, than the voice comm digital signals.
[35:48.800 --> 35:58.700]  Another thing you can do an entire talk on is cell signals. Like I said, I had to ask somebody for pictures of cell signals, because we barely receive any from here.
[35:58.980 --> 36:09.480]  The left image is a 4G WCDMA signal, and the right image is an LTE high-speed 300 megabits per second signal.
[36:10.540 --> 36:20.740]  People have been using SDRs to see where 5G signals have popped up. There's none around here that I know of. Even in Seattle, I don't think there's any yet.
[36:21.380 --> 36:25.100]  But the people around LA have been seeing a few.
[36:26.320 --> 36:32.640]  And it is illegal to interact with these signals, by the way, to my knowledge.
[36:32.640 --> 36:40.860]  You should probably look it up. You can look at them, but you can't receive them, to my knowledge.
[36:41.980 --> 36:51.160]  Also in UHF, you have the ISM bands, 433 MHz and 902 to 928 MHz.
[36:51.160 --> 36:58.920]  This could also be an entire other talk. In fact, there usually is talks about these signals in the wireless village.
[36:59.680 --> 37:04.860]  But they'll be just little bursts of data all over the place. A lot of them.
[37:04.860 --> 37:11.580]  If you're in an apartment complex or something, or in a city, you will just see a ton of these little bursts going around.
[37:11.580 --> 37:16.400]  They're usually AFSK signals, which is audio frequency shift keying.
[37:16.640 --> 37:24.540]  Some of them can be decoded, but unless you know exactly what you're looking at, you're going to end up staring at bits forever.
[37:26.340 --> 37:34.840]  ADS-B is, of course, another signal up here at 1090 MHz.
[37:35.600 --> 37:45.900]  And this is used by planes. They send out near real-time GPS information and speed information and altitude.
[37:45.900 --> 37:54.480]  And these can be tracked. You can do it yourself with RTL-1090 or DUMP-1090.
[37:54.600 --> 38:01.600]  It's pretty popular to set up a station to receive these and then pump the results out to something.
[38:01.660 --> 38:09.920]  ADS-B exchange is my favorite. You can find out what all the planes are usually that are flying overhead from there.
[38:09.920 --> 38:15.440]  But again, this is another signal type where you can do an entire talk on this.
[38:15.440 --> 38:21.720]  And people have done entire talks on ADS-B because it is incredibly complicated and there's a lot to do with it.
[38:22.080 --> 38:29.020]  This signal is actually of the interrogator signal, which is sent out from airports, I believe.
[38:29.640 --> 38:34.160]  Other signals in UHF, you've got radiosondes, which are weather balloons.
[38:34.160 --> 38:39.380]  And you can track these. The top image is there. You've got the thing showing the tracking.
[38:39.380 --> 38:44.600]  And then the middle one, you have the actual signal itself, or one of the types of signals.
[38:46.200 --> 38:52.740]  And also there's pagers up here at 329 to 336 MHz.
[38:52.740 --> 39:00.000]  It is illegal to receive these because there's usually confidential information sent.
[39:00.000 --> 39:04.840]  Pagers are usually used by places like prisons and hospitals.
[39:04.840 --> 39:13.560]  If you were to generate your own signal, though, you can use a program called PDW to decode them.
[39:13.560 --> 39:24.180]  There's also fixed microwave links. They usually go between transmitter sites or other types of things.
[39:24.180 --> 39:29.000]  You can see that in the bottom image. They're just really big, fuzzy blobs, usually.
[39:29.000 --> 39:34.520]  SCADA is another thing, which is used for industrial automation and telemetry.
[39:35.340 --> 39:41.560]  They just kind of stick random data in there, and it gets modulated.
[39:41.560 --> 39:50.020]  GPS signals, it starts at about 1.2 GHz and goes to 1.3 GHz for the normal GPS signal.
[39:50.020 --> 39:56.420]  Unfortunately, the wiki currently does not have an image of GPS. If you can get a GPS signal, please add it to the wiki.
[39:56.420 --> 40:06.040]  But there's also the one at 1.5 GHz, which is another type of GPS signal.
[40:07.140 --> 40:13.700]  And also the hydrogen line at 1.42 GHz, which is kind of famously at 21 centimeters.
[40:13.700 --> 40:19.280]  If you watch Star Trek The Next Generation, that comes up once or twice.
[40:20.160 --> 40:29.160]  That you can point up at the sky and see the signal generated by hydrogen.
[40:29.600 --> 40:33.560]  If you point it at the Milky Way, you'll get a bit of a signal there. It's pretty interesting.
[40:34.220 --> 40:41.800]  There's also the GOES satellites, which use high-resolution picture transmission at 1.67 to 1.71 GHz.
[40:41.800 --> 40:48.100]  You can get some very nice satellite images that are in color.
[40:49.340 --> 40:51.780]  If you can receive them.
[40:52.340 --> 41:00.120]  But now that we've kind of hit 2 GHz, so the wiki, the signal ID wiki, you can contribute to it.
[41:00.120 --> 41:07.440]  Anybody can contribute to it. The wiki is only as good as the people that contribute to it.
[41:07.440 --> 41:14.840]  So, we need more contributions constantly. You can find those on the requested page on what we want.
[41:14.840 --> 41:18.400]  There's things like GPS for some reason that hasn't been added.
[41:18.460 --> 41:22.280]  There's a couple types of cell signals that we don't have any information on.
[41:22.620 --> 41:28.820]  There's also, I'm sure, a ton of stuff in VHF and UHF that we have yet to add to the wiki.
[41:29.240 --> 41:38.620]  And if you wish to explore an SDR, that link there is a very good SDR that gets HF 0 to 30 MHz.
[41:38.660 --> 41:40.280]  It's the one most people use.
[41:40.280 --> 41:49.260]  Another thing with the wiki, there is a Discord. There's instructions on the website on how to get into the Discord.
[41:49.400 --> 41:58.720]  If you're watching this DEF CON talk, you can actually PM me on Discord and I can send you a link if you're serious about helping.
[42:00.080 --> 42:04.880]  But yes, there's a lot of nerds in the Discord if you ever have any questions.
[42:05.300 --> 42:09.720]  They're very, very good at signals. Way better than me at some of them.
[42:11.820 --> 42:12.300]  Anyway...
[42:12.300 --> 42:20.680]  Thank you! Thank you for watching this presentation. You can follow me on Twitter at PancakeFM if you like Star Trek memes and Array-related tweets.
[42:20.680 --> 42:27.840]  And special thanks to Cartoon Man and Notipa, which are the SIGID admins and also the other wiki contributors.
[42:27.840 --> 42:31.560]  And also my friends who have encouraged me to do this presentation.
[42:32.020 --> 42:36.180]  Alright. I think that's it. I think it's this button.
[42:37.300 --> 42:38.440]  There we go.
[42:38.440 --> 42:50.420]  Alright. Q&A. If you are in the DEF CON server, you can go to HRV presentation text and I can answer some questions.
[42:51.700 --> 42:54.500]  If you have any questions. Hopefully you do.
[42:55.500 --> 42:56.520]  Howdy!
[42:59.590 --> 43:02.570]  Goodness. I hope that went slightly smoothly.
[43:04.430 --> 43:06.450]  Anybody got any questions?
[43:06.730 --> 43:09.950]  Again, it's in the DEF CON main server.
[43:10.390 --> 43:13.110]  And it's the HRV presentation text.
[43:13.110 --> 43:21.630]  What's the strangest signal I've come across? One of the strangest signals is that Sava modem from South Africa.
[43:21.630 --> 43:29.590]  It uses a combination of Teletype and MFSK and a couple other things. It's very weird.
[43:30.430 --> 43:37.110]  What software do I use? I use HDSDR. I think it's one of the nicer programs.
[43:38.310 --> 43:41.550]  It runs better than SDRSharp.
[43:45.410 --> 43:49.830]  Any resources for beginning SDR analysis? Honestly, go to the wiki.
[43:50.610 --> 43:57.210]  The wiki has a ton of signals. If you see any signal, it's almost guaranteed to be on the wiki.
[44:04.200 --> 44:12.100]  Programs for decoding signals? Sorcerer is very good. MultiPSK is a very old program, but it works.
[44:13.780 --> 44:22.360]  Have I seen any ATSC 3 signals? No, but I've heard that they're rolling out. I've seen some images of them on Twitter from other radio dorks.
[44:22.700 --> 44:27.160]  I think it looks slightly different from normal ATSC.
[44:31.340 --> 44:35.780]  Pagers are kind of complicated because of the confidential information.
[44:36.680 --> 44:44.340]  I think it's technically legal to receive them, but you can't store the pager data. It's really odd.
[44:45.070 --> 44:51.530]  You can receive them, sort of, but you should probably check the rules yourself.
[44:53.930 --> 44:56.010]  Any other questions?
[45:03.440 --> 45:08.640]  How do you recommend following trunking with a single SDR?
[45:08.640 --> 45:17.860]  SDR trunk and DSD plus and Fastlane together. I believe those two programs can do trunking.
[45:17.860 --> 45:29.280]  I haven't done trunking signals stuff because we barely have any VHF and UHF signals around here.
[45:29.280 --> 45:34.660]  And yeah, always check your local laws if you're questioning anything.
[45:44.900 --> 45:49.400]  Is it possible to modify FM radio receivers to cover a wider range?
[45:49.400 --> 45:57.300]  I have no idea. It might be possible, but probably not much further than the air band or slightly below.
[45:58.040 --> 46:09.320]  Because those radio receivers are generally pretty specified to just normal 80-105 MHz area.
[46:22.370 --> 46:25.570]  I actually really like radars. That's why there are so many radar images.
[46:26.130 --> 46:29.910]  Have you found unencrypted car key fobs that were replayable?
[46:29.910 --> 46:37.650]  Yeah, there's supposedly a bunch. I haven't found any because I just don't look for them.
[46:42.090 --> 46:47.090]  Yeah, the pager stuff is complicated, definitely.
[46:54.180 --> 47:02.660]  But from what I understand, a lot of car key fobs can be replayable. I don't think very many of them are encrypted in any way.
[47:02.660 --> 47:05.440]  It's usually just a number that it sends to them.
[47:05.520 --> 47:07.700]  What kind of antennas do I use?
[47:08.120 --> 47:18.360]  I have a delta loop, which is about 150 feet of wire in a big triangle above the house.
[47:18.360 --> 47:24.800]  I use that for HF, and that's tuned for about 40 meters with 7 MHz.
[47:24.800 --> 47:34.420]  And that basically actually covers all of HF and lower, like VLF. I can get a little bit of VLF on it. Works pretty well.
[47:34.420 --> 47:47.640]  And then I have an antenna as well that's a 6x6 foot loop that is tuned for around 45 MHz to get the low VHF band stuff like the military comms that's used in the area.
[47:56.120 --> 47:59.000]  Can you recommend a generic transmitter?
[47:59.000 --> 48:04.400]  I don't do much transmitting actually, and the transmitting I do do is just ham radio stuff.
[48:05.820 --> 48:08.520]  So, just on the normal ham bands.
[48:08.520 --> 48:19.420]  But from what I understand, stuff like the HackRF and BladeRF can transmit a little bit if you're just doing IOT related stuff.
[48:20.400 --> 48:25.440]  And there's, again, laws involved with transmitting that you probably want to look up.
[48:31.390 --> 48:36.370]  Is there any other questions? Because I think I'm about out of my time slot now.
[48:41.680 --> 48:48.860]  I will be in the HRV presentation voice after I stop streaming.
[48:49.260 --> 48:53.160]  Yes, it's a great talk. Thank you. I was very nervous to do it.
[48:54.600 --> 49:01.880]  Yes. Alright. See you later. Again, I'll be in the HRV presentation voice channel if you have any questions after I stop.
[49:02.020 --> 49:02.720]  Thank you.
[49:18.140 --> 49:21.400]  Thank you.
[49:34.080 --> 49:35.380]  Thank you.
[50:10.200 --> 50:11.600]  Thank you.
[50:44.920 --> 50:45.520]  Thank you.