WEBVTT 00:34.980 --> 01:17.060 Let me tell you a story When I was young, I had dreams of glory All these mistakes Seemed to come like a flood Until my days, my days, they were done But I don't want to feel like a wishful thinking Pick myself up and move to the beat of my heart and my soul 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 --> 01:53.500 Anyway, what I do. 01:53.500 --> 01:55.240 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 --> 02:24.020 And I also have a 6x6 foot square loop up in a tree, which is used for low VHF. 02:24.020 --> 02:26.580 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 --> 02:41.080 And I'm biased towards HF. 02:41.080 --> 02:43.780 I much prefer HF, because of where I am. 02:43.780 --> 02:45.280 I'm in a semi-rural area. 02:45.280 --> 02:47.660 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 --> 03:00.020 I barely even have cell signal here. 03:00.200 --> 03:03.500 I had to ask somebody to give me a picture of the cell signal. 03:03.500 --> 03:08.280 And I love the propagation dynamics of HF and low VHF. 03:08.860 --> 03:12.920 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 --> 03:28.840 And I have not made a PowerPoint since middle school, nor have I done a presentation since high school. 03:28.840 --> 03:31.600 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 --> 05:56.880 They use minimum shift keying. 05:56.880 --> 05:58.240 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 --> 06:05.020 Which I like to listen to. 06:05.020 --> 06:07.700 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 --> 08:15.760 Oh, and ships. 08:15.760 --> 08:17.200 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 --> 08:27.140 And it just turned out to be from the town 10 miles away. 08:27.140 --> 08:28.740 It was disappointing. 08:30.360 --> 08:32.780 Differential GPS is another thing that's over here. 08:32.780 --> 08:34.020 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 --> 08:44.560 By fixing the times or something. 08:44.560 --> 08:45.980 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 --> 09:30.900 And it still exists. 09:31.000 --> 09:34.220 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 --> 09:53.660 And that can actually be decoded, I believe. 09:53.660 --> 09:56.280 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 --> 12:18.920 It's very weird. 12:18.920 --> 12:21.800 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 --> 12:35.940 Sometimes you can hear Windows noises. 12:35.960 --> 12:39.520 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 --> 13:14.320 We're not entirely sure. 13:14.320 --> 13:18.420 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 --> 13:50.960 But there's other types of radars, too. 13:50.960 --> 13:57.580 There's relocatable ones, which show up as little rectangles that move all over the place. 13:58.440 --> 14:00.080 They're pretty annoying. 14:00.280 --> 14:02.840 I'm checking my things here. 14:04.160 --> 14:06.940 I don't know what an audio issue it is. 14:06.940 --> 14:08.260 Should be fine. 14:11.680 --> 14:16.480 Yeah, so the relocatable ones, they show up as little rectangles. 14:16.480 --> 14:20.080 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 --> 14:42.190 There's also research radars. 14:42.190 --> 14:43.730 CODAR is a type of radar. 14:43.730 --> 14:50.490 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 --> 15:03.510 So it's an academic radar that they use. 15:03.510 --> 15:18.750 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 --> 15:22.970 There's also HAARP, which I've actually caught HAARP transmitting. 15:22.970 --> 15:29.390 That middle image there is some type of carrier that they were doing research with. 15:31.310 --> 15:37.050 HAARP does not actually do weather control like some conspiracy people say. 15:37.050 --> 15:41.810 In fact, you can tweet the head scientist on Twitter. 15:42.110 --> 15:43.430 He's a cool guy. 15:43.430 --> 15:52.070 And then there's Ionisons as well, which show up as diagonal sweeps that go from 1 to 40 MHz about. 15:52.350 --> 16:04.930 And those receive echoes from ionosphere layers, and you can get a rough estimate of propagation with them as well. 16:05.590 --> 16:22.930 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. 16:23.170 --> 16:26.730 It's very complicated, but interesting if you're capable of doing it. 16:26.730 --> 16:32.270 There's a talk that you can find for that somewhere. 16:33.050 --> 16:41.410 There's also on HF a ton of different military signals, and there's a lot of them. 16:41.430 --> 16:55.730 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. 16:55.730 --> 17:00.270 It's got weird diagonal stripes that show up. 17:00.270 --> 17:03.570 And they change these all of the time. 17:03.950 --> 17:12.930 In fact, in Europe, there's a guy that tries to decode these, just posting bits and stuff. 17:12.930 --> 17:22.010 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 --> 17:37.190 There's also the Panther modem signals, which show up as little data bursts. 17:37.630 --> 17:44.630 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 --> 17:52.590 And there's also HF, Global Communications System, which is by the United States Air Force. 17:52.590 --> 18:00.290 And that's actually just talking, but they say numbers and letters and stuff, and they have them using code names. 18:00.290 --> 18:06.170 You'll catch that at 4.724 MHz, usually. 18:07.150 --> 18:08.970 There's other ones, too. 18:08.970 --> 18:11.010 They go through the whole system. 18:12.410 --> 18:26.830 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 --> 18:41.470 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. 18:44.590 --> 18:50.170 Also, on HF, there's a ton of time signals. 18:50.170 --> 18:56.250 WWV is well known at 2.55, 10, 15, 20, and 25 MHz. 18:56.670 --> 19:10.370 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 --> 19:15.450 The Canadian one's kind of interesting, because it has a modem beep noise. 19:15.450 --> 19:23.870 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. 19:23.870 --> 19:33.750 That second image there, the tall, skinny one, was the time that the Russian one showed up at the 9.996 MHz. 19:33.790 --> 19:36.050 That one's kind of neat, it's got a lot of beeps. 19:36.050 --> 19:45.150 And if you're unaware, also, the WWV and WWVH one, they use separate tones. 19:45.510 --> 19:56.870 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 --> 20:14.290 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. 20:14.290 --> 20:17.140 Well, not a claim, but, you know, where they occupy. 20:19.180 --> 20:24.920 And also, the WWVH has a female voice, where WWVH has a male voice. 20:24.940 --> 20:28.840 There's other things that they broadcast, such as space weather and stuff. 20:29.100 --> 20:31.100 You can find a list of that. 20:31.820 --> 20:35.980 And they also show the schedule on the hour, if I remember correctly. 20:36.700 --> 20:41.040 And obviously, there's shortwave radio on HF. 20:41.800 --> 20:45.300 Some people don't realize that this still exists, but it definitely does. 20:45.300 --> 21:02.440 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 --> 21:05.300 And it's great for estimating propagation. 21:05.300 --> 21:12.740 Sometimes, you know, Greece will show up at 9,420 kHz. 21:12.740 --> 21:15.000 That one, they play some fun music. 21:15.000 --> 21:24.600 But it also means that, you know, the ionosphere might have an opening up to Europe around 10 MHz on the 30 meter band. 21:24.600 --> 21:26.820 So it might be time to try some FT8 there. 21:26.820 --> 21:33.680 But there's also DRM, which is a digital radio signal. 21:33.760 --> 21:37.840 And you can decode those with a program called Dream. 21:37.840 --> 21:46.700 You generally need a pretty good signal-to-noise ratio to decode these, because it's digital information. 21:46.700 --> 21:51.180 About 14 dB or higher is probably what's needed. 21:51.180 --> 21:55.260 And also, you want to make sure that it doesn't have any horrific fading. 21:55.260 --> 21:58.280 Otherwise, you know, you're losing data in the house. 21:58.280 --> 22:01.300 And you can see DRM in both of the images. 22:01.960 --> 22:10.460 The top right image is when the Russians were testing a DRM station on their east coast. 22:11.140 --> 22:18.060 Which, for some reason, played like a Matrix song every time they turned off for the day. 22:18.060 --> 22:19.580 That was interesting. 22:19.880 --> 22:24.340 But you can find more info on the schedules at hfcc.org. 22:25.080 --> 22:29.700 I personally like DRM. 22:30.900 --> 22:33.380 There's other signals on HF, of course. 22:33.380 --> 22:34.480 Modems. 22:34.520 --> 22:36.940 You've got Paktor modems. 22:36.940 --> 22:43.060 There's also the HFDL, which is for planes flying over the ocean. 22:43.060 --> 22:46.600 There's a program called Sorcerer that's very good at decoding those. 22:47.640 --> 22:53.860 And you can get their location and small messages, I guess, from those. 22:53.860 --> 22:57.960 There's GMDSS, which is for boats lost at sea. 22:57.960 --> 23:03.260 Well, not really lost, but they're doing things out there. 23:03.400 --> 23:10.220 And that's for setting up calls between boats and also if they're in distress. 23:11.420 --> 23:15.780 ALE, which is in the bottom left image, is an MFK signal. 23:15.780 --> 23:17.660 It goes doodly doodly doodly doodly do. 23:17.840 --> 23:18.940 You'll know it when you hear it. 23:18.940 --> 23:20.880 It's about 2 or 3 seconds long. 23:21.040 --> 23:28.600 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 --> 23:32.040 Sinotor B is also known as NAVTEX. 23:32.060 --> 23:41.400 You can get maritime notifications, which the ones I receive are usually, hey, Russia's doing a missile test in this area. 23:41.420 --> 23:43.920 Don't take your boat out there. 23:44.420 --> 23:45.660 It's interesting. 23:45.660 --> 23:49.780 NFC is also technically a HF signal. 23:50.100 --> 23:57.240 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 --> 24:01.340 There's also experimental radio stock trading, interestingly. 24:01.500 --> 24:10.800 Supposedly, it goes from London to New York or Chicago or I don't remember what other place. 24:10.800 --> 24:23.340 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 --> 24:34.320 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. 24:34.320 --> 24:44.840 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. 24:44.880 --> 24:48.220 That's worth noting because it's a very funky image. 24:48.520 --> 24:52.300 A funky signal that shows up at 4347. 24:58.460 --> 25:00.600 There's also lightning on HF. 25:00.600 --> 25:06.480 If you ever see this type of thing on your SDR, you need to unplug your antenna, like, immediately. 25:07.000 --> 25:12.860 This was across the state when this was happening, but it was still pretty hefty. 25:12.860 --> 25:26.260 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. 25:27.000 --> 25:29.380 But it does make neat noises sometimes. 25:29.380 --> 25:33.420 And of course, there's amateur radio all over HF. 25:33.500 --> 25:48.940 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 --> 25:53.380 But I'm glad this image was of Field Day 2019. 25:53.380 --> 26:00.820 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. 26:00.820 --> 26:08.000 We get asked about FT-8 a lot on the signal identification wiki, because people don't realize what it is. 26:08.000 --> 26:09.640 And it comes in strong, of course. 26:09.640 --> 26:12.700 Some people can receive FT-8 even without an antenna. 26:14.900 --> 26:23.820 And so, now we are at VHF, and I'm sort of running slow, but VHF, this is the land of Sporadic E. 26:23.820 --> 26:27.500 This is what Sporadic E can do to a 6 meter signal. 26:27.900 --> 26:35.760 The left image is a normal day, and the right image was a fantastic day for 6 meters. 26:36.180 --> 26:40.260 But that's just an idea of what Sporadic E does. 26:40.260 --> 26:54.840 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. 26:54.840 --> 26:57.060 Doesn't seem like you should, but you can. 26:57.060 --> 27:03.320 That top left image, I believe, was two helicopters out for doing target practice. 27:03.320 --> 27:15.160 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. 27:15.160 --> 27:18.340 So it uses packets that fly around at 100 packets per second. 27:18.340 --> 27:19.820 It looks pretty neat. 27:21.360 --> 27:26.980 You won't be able to receive that, obviously, because it's super encrypted stuff. 27:27.960 --> 27:33.920 There's also remote telemetry stations that use meteor scatter propagation, like SNOTEL. 27:33.920 --> 27:38.520 SNOTEL is that image in the middle, which is snow telemetry. 27:38.520 --> 27:41.060 They have stations up in the mountains. 27:41.800 --> 27:49.380 And when a meteor comes through, the signal will get received, hopefully, from the ionization trail. 27:49.380 --> 27:51.220 The signal can bounce off of that. 27:51.360 --> 27:54.660 There's also still NTSC stations. 27:54.660 --> 27:56.420 There's none in the United States. 27:56.420 --> 28:04.420 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 --> 28:16.440 There's people that try and receive these, because you can receive an NTSC signal much further than the new digital television signals. 28:16.780 --> 28:25.620 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 --> 28:47.300 And that bottom image is actually an NTSC signal that was generated from a VCR and is being decoded by TVSharp. 28:47.300 --> 28:53.720 The guy that sent me that image is one of the guys that likes to do NTSC DXing. 28:53.720 --> 28:56.200 It's becoming very hard to do. 28:56.200 --> 29:01.080 But he once received a signal in Canada, all the way in Texas. 29:01.620 --> 29:05.600 And we were watching I Love Lucy, if I remember correctly. 29:06.040 --> 29:10.360 And also there's, of course, the FM broadcast band. 29:10.360 --> 29:19.780 If you look at this image, the rectangles on the sides of the FM broadcast signal are HD radio. 29:19.780 --> 29:22.860 I believe there's a program to decode these. 29:22.860 --> 29:26.400 It's a proprietary signal, so I'm not sure. 29:26.480 --> 29:29.600 But those are signals that newer cars can receive. 29:29.600 --> 29:33.700 A bit clearer audio than normal FM signal. 29:35.020 --> 29:48.380 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. 29:48.380 --> 29:51.800 It uses the phase correlation something. 29:51.980 --> 29:53.200 It's very complicated. 29:53.200 --> 29:56.580 There's, of course, airband comms in A cars. 29:56.580 --> 30:03.120 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 --> 30:27.900 People ask about these a lot. 30:27.900 --> 30:31.760 They are very popular to receive the images from NOAA and Meteor. 30:32.020 --> 30:34.440 You can get some very nice satellite images. 30:35.120 --> 30:37.680 ISS is also over here. 30:37.680 --> 30:40.540 They are in the 2 meter band, usually. 30:40.540 --> 30:46.400 And, of course, right now they have been doing SSTV from there. 30:46.400 --> 30:51.100 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 --> 31:15.540 They are just linear transponders. 31:15.720 --> 31:19.660 So, if you know the input frequency, you can just transmit onto them. 31:19.660 --> 31:21.000 However, that's very illegal. 31:21.000 --> 31:22.080 Don't do it. 31:22.080 --> 31:24.340 And I don't even know what they are. 31:24.540 --> 31:32.800 There is also MILSTAR, which uses an FHSS, Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum, signal, which is the image on the right. 31:32.800 --> 31:34.560 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 --> 32:02.560 Other signals in VHF include ATSC, which you can decode with GNU Radio. 32:02.980 --> 32:05.120 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 --> 32:24.200 There is also, of course, the NOAA Weather Radio, which is pretty neat. 32:24.340 --> 32:29.120 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 --> 32:54.880 And in UHF, there's no longer anything to do with the ionosphere. 32:54.880 --> 33:00.260 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 --> 33:39.740 But there's also radio stuff at 700, 800, and 500 MHz in some cities. 33:39.740 --> 33:44.560 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 --> 34:24.480 GMRS and FRS is walkie-talkies in businesses. 34:25.180 --> 34:29.380 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 --> 34:49.120 Because it's perfectly legal to listen to these things. 34:49.120 --> 34:53.520 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 --> 35:52.300 Another thing you can do an entire talk on is cell signals. 35:52.300 --> 35:58.700 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 --> 36:16.580 People have been using SDRs to see where 5G signals have popped up. 36:16.580 --> 36:18.380 There's none around here that I know of. 36:18.380 --> 36:20.740 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 --> 36:34.440 You should probably look it up. 36:35.340 --> 36:40.860 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 --> 36:53.360 This could also be an entire other talk. 36:53.360 --> 36:58.920 In fact, there usually is talks about these signals in the wireless village. 36:59.680 --> 37:03.960 But they'll be just little bursts of data all over the place. 37:03.960 --> 37:04.860 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 --> 37:37.340 And this is used by planes. 37:37.340 --> 37:45.900 They send out near real-time GPS information and speed information and altitude. 37:45.900 --> 37:48.600 And these can be tracked. 37:49.460 --> 37:54.480 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 --> 38:04.460 ADS-B exchange is my favorite. 38:04.460 --> 38:09.920 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 --> 38:35.540 And you can track these. 38:35.540 --> 38:37.380 The top image is there. 38:37.380 --> 38:39.380 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 --> 39:16.740 There's also fixed microwave links. 39:17.060 --> 39:24.180 They usually go between transmitter sites or other types of things. 39:24.180 --> 39:25.800 You can see that in the bottom image. 39:25.800 --> 39:29.000 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 --> 39:53.360 Unfortunately, the wiki currently does not have an image of GPS. 39:53.360 --> 39:56.420 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 --> 40:32.180 If you point it at the Milky Way, you'll get a bit of a signal there. 40:32.180 --> 40:33.560 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 --> 41:01.680 Anybody can contribute to it. 41:01.680 --> 41:07.440 The wiki is only as good as the people that contribute to it. 41:07.440 --> 41:11.420 So, we need more contributions constantly. 41:11.420 --> 41:14.840 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 --> 41:43.740 Another thing with the wiki, there is a Discord. 41:43.740 --> 41:49.260 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 --> 42:07.480 They're very, very good at signals. 42:07.500 --> 42:09.720 Way better than me at some of them. 42:11.820 --> 42:12.300 Anyway... 42:12.300 --> 42:12.900 Thank you! 42:12.900 --> 42:14.420 Thank you for watching this presentation. 42:14.420 --> 42:20.680 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 --> 42:32.840 Alright. 42:33.140 --> 42:34.240 I think that's it. 42:34.240 --> 42:36.180 I think it's this button. 42:37.300 --> 42:38.440 There we go. 42:38.440 --> 42:38.840 Alright. 42:38.840 --> 42:39.580 Q&A. 42:39.580 --> 42:50.420 If you are in the DEF CON server, you can go to HRV presentation text and I can answer some questions. 42:51.700 --> 42:53.280 If you have any questions. 42:53.280 --> 42:54.500 Hopefully you do. 42:55.500 --> 42:56.520 Howdy! 42:59.590 --> 43:00.610 Goodness. 43:00.610 --> 43:02.570 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 --> 43:15.110 What's the strangest signal I've come across? 43:15.110 --> 43:21.630 One of the strangest signals is that Sava modem from South Africa. 43:21.630 --> 43:28.210 It uses a combination of Teletype and MFSK and a couple other things. 43:28.210 --> 43:29.590 It's very weird. 43:30.430 --> 43:32.090 What software do I use? 43:32.090 --> 43:33.730 I use HDSDR. 43:33.730 --> 43:37.110 I think it's one of the nicer programs. 43:38.310 --> 43:41.550 It runs better than SDRSharp. 43:45.410 --> 43:48.430 Any resources for beginning SDR analysis? 43:48.430 --> 43:49.830 Honestly, go to the wiki. 43:50.610 --> 43:52.690 The wiki has a ton of signals. 43:52.690 --> 43:57.210 If you see any signal, it's almost guaranteed to be on the wiki. 44:04.200 --> 44:06.620 Programs for decoding signals? 44:06.620 --> 44:07.980 Sorcerer is very good. 44:08.460 --> 44:12.100 MultiPSK is a very old program, but it works. 44:13.780 --> 44:16.480 Have I seen any ATSC 3 signals? 44:16.480 --> 44:18.440 No, but I've heard that they're rolling out. 44:18.440 --> 44:22.360 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 --> 44:42.920 I think it's technically legal to receive them, but you can't store the pager data. 44:42.920 --> 44:44.340 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 --> 45:14.300 SDR trunk and DSD plus and Fastlane together. 45:14.300 --> 45:17.860 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 --> 45:50.800 I have no idea. 45:50.800 --> 45:57.300 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 --> 46:23.890 I actually really like radars. 46:23.890 --> 46:25.570 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 --> 46:32.310 Yeah, there's supposedly a bunch. 46:32.310 --> 46:37.650 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 --> 46:58.360 But from what I understand, a lot of car key fobs can be replayable. 46:58.360 --> 47:02.660 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 --> 47:30.660 And that basically actually covers all of HF and lower, like VLF. 47:30.660 --> 47:32.860 I can get a little bit of VLF on it. 47:32.960 --> 47:34.420 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 --> 48:33.110 Is there any other questions? 48:33.110 --> 48:36.370 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 --> 48:50.080 Yes, it's a great talk. 48:50.080 --> 48:50.840 Thank you. 48:51.560 --> 48:53.160 I was very nervous to do it. 48:54.600 --> 48:55.240 Yes. 48:55.420 --> 48:56.080 Alright. 48:56.240 --> 48:56.780 See you later. 48:56.780 --> 49:01.880 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.