The Hidden Signal Inside A Platinum Selling Album
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ต.ค. 2023
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In Finland in the 90's the national broadcasting company YLE played a song called "Maan tapa" (roughly translates to "the way of the land") by the band Lindelltronics which caused majority of the YLE's radio transmitters nationwide to go offline as the song included the sample of the radio programming termination signal used by YLE back then. The radio DJ that played the song has later said it was a pure work accident and not an intentional act from his part and since it was played in night programming, the effect to listeners was much less than it would have been had it happened during daytime.
How interesting!
That's hilarious 😂😂😂
I love stories like this.
What are the chances of that I was just booked a ticket for my friend to Finland
Found it did you, fan of Mike Oldfield, spec analysis will find these things.
That's an unusual one. I once came across radio interference, where a complainant could hear a local radio ham coming from her gas oven. Did some tests and sure enough there was a faint, SSB signal audible. An oxidised joint between a copper pipe and a steel one was rectifying the strong SSB transmission and modulating the flame when the burner was alight. All sorted by a gas fitter.
She should have asked for a QSL card!
I heard of someone who could hear radio signals in his head and it turned out to be a filling in his tooth that was detecting the signal and demodulating the AM!
I always thought it was my ears, thank you for clarifying
I have heard of toilets playing nearby AM radio stations
I worked on a set of flats next to the transmitter at whichbold. We were putting new pipework in, and big sparks were jumping between pipe runs as we screwed the steel tubes together. When we finished, ground straps had to be fitted everywhere. And I was plumbing in a sink unit drainer and I could hear voices coming out of the plug hole.
I mentioned GBR's signal being recorded on "Tubular Bells" in my video about how you can use a computer sound card to receive and decode VLF radio signals. It works surprisingly well if you have a suitable outdoor antenna and a location away from sources of interference: th-cam.com/video/L2W1x6Rb9hI/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for sharing!
Never thought I’d see you here! Small world
I once noted a brief high pitched tone on a recorded song (don't remember which). I analyzed the audio in a spectrum analyzer software and came to the conclusion that a television set must have been present in the studio. The tone was 15625 Hz, equal to the line frequency in most PAL-countries. :)
This is why when I was a kid I could always tell if the TV was on from anywhere in the house. Didn't know it at the time but learned it years later.
I have heard this in a meatloaf song. I think it was paradise by the dashboard lights, but it may have been hot patootie from rocky horror
Even when TV sound was sent by NICAM - digitally, rather than analogue, there was still a noticeable 15625 Hz component in any sound recordings made (eg on my PC's sound card) from the phono outputs of my VCR (on off-air programmes as well as recordings off-tape). I imagine that the equivalent 15750 Hz component was present on recordings made in the US.
Also, there was a sound recording format that used video tape for digital recordings of musical instruments, and some studios may have used that rather than analogue, either for the master or for some instrument tracks that were recorded elsewhere, and that could have injected 15625 or 15750 Hz into recordings.
When computer displays started to be used in recording studios, there could be sub-harmonics of those which were within audible range (ie max 20 kHz).
Related to hidden messages, " Chroma dots " are an artifact when color PAL TV is recorded in black and white. Once considered to cause unwanted picture degradation, the color can be restored from a B/W tape using Chroma dots .
i recall hearing about this re: lost dr who episodes (or at least lost in colour, lol)
I’ve always wondered about that! I’m so pleased to find out it’s really possible!
In the early days of audio recording, they would cut wax disks live. Because of a high chance of faults, they would often have two (mono) recorders running at the same time, each with their own microphone. In many cases, both disks were saved. With clever processing, this has allowed many ancient recordings to be improved and turned into srereo.
If you are interested in this technology, you could Google a guy by the name of Richard Russell. He seems to have been some kind of BBC in-house professor, working on all kinds of interring stuff, including this. I believe he was also involved in the development of BBC BASIC - something which he keeps alive, even today.
Great video, love this spooky stuff! There is a well-known "hidden message" (not hidden well at all) in the Rush instrumental "YYZ", where the opening riff is the morse code for the Toronto airport radio navigation beacon, YYZ, of course. Story is that guitarist Alex Lifeson has a pilot's license and was flying the band into Toronto, and had his comnav radio tuned to the beacon. Drummer Neil Peart thought the morse code was a cool rhythm, and since Toronto was the band's home town, they built a whole track around it.
I wouldn't call that a "hidden message." That's the basis for the whole song.
Someone is missing the meaning of "hidden message".
Guess why the track is called "YYZ". 😉
@YavorM-Yash Go easy on him, at least he brought up Rush!
One could argue it is hidden due to it being an instrumental. It isn't forthcoming with the exact subject.
@@nojuanatall3281 I guess you are right.
If you ignore the name of the instrumental...
VVV is commonly used in CW to denote “Be aware, there is a message about to be sent” and comes from WW1 when wireless operators sent V’s before messages to signal the end of hostilities, or “Victory”. It’s been essentially used as “standby for a message” since then
clackbait?
Vs were also used in Morse Code to fine tune the incoming signal. Q and Z codes were used for abbreviated messages. It would go something like this: ABE de DEF QSA IMI (ABC this is DEF How do you read me?) The morse operator on the other end would reply with QSA 2 QSA IMI (Your signal strength is 2 out of 5. How do you read me?) He would send QSV K (Send Vs). The other guy would send ...- ...- ...- ...- to allow the receiver to turn his radio knob to the strongest signal.
73s from KD7CKT
Good grief.... "V" indicates a test. "DE" is French for "from." So "VVV DE GBR =" Test from GBR." -de W2AG
Beautiful. Not familiar with that Quo album but Tubular was big when I was a kid. The depth of knowledge and research in your work is off the hook.
It was almost mandatory to have a copy. Along with Led Zep Vol 4. :-)
I still have my original copy of Tubular Bells from 1973, album cover autographed by Mike Oldfield,
@@philsharp758
Do you know the hidden trick with Zeppelin's In Through The Outdoor album? The swipe on the cover is the clue.
The album liner is one of those water color things like they had books of for kids years ago, me and a friend accidentally discovered it when we were listening to the album in his bedroom right after it came out and he accidentally spilled a drink that got one corner of the liner wet and the color came out, so we got a rag and dampened the corner of it and dabbed it all over the black and white picture on both sides and don't you know color came out just like those water color books from when we were little kids.
Over the year's I've told that to a lot of people only to have them run into a back room and emerge with the album saying "Show me", I did run into one however that didn't do it, apparently at one point to cut costs most likely they quit making them like that and the later one's don't do it but from what I've seen the bulk of them will.
Great album ❤ have a listen 😁
I had a friend who worked at Rugby as a Radio Technician for many years and he confirmed to be in the 1980s that the RN communicated with their Submarines from there. Whilst working there he also moonlighted in 1984 and went out to the Radio Lazer ship "Communicator" to advise on the Transmitter side of things. Then after the ship returned to England after spells of Broadcasting in Portugal, and Holland with such stations as Holland FM and Radio Veronica he rejoined the crew of the Communicaror in Ipswich again dealing with the technical side of things. Not sure when he left Rugby, but he ended up living on one of the Shetland islands, and coincidently the ship ended up there supposedly to be used by a Community Radio station, but that never happened and the ship was eventually scrapped .
Fascinating find!
The "unintended receiver" aspect reminds me of an interesting story, from memory it was one of the examiners back when I first got my ham license.
At some point he worked as a field investigator for the ACA (The government comms authority in VK at the time) checking out reports of harmful interference.
He said he'd sometimes get sent out to calls where on arrival he'd find someone who was clearly mentally unstable, complaining of hearing voices, radio waves "controlling their thoughts" etc. Being a kind soul, he'd usually get the spectrum analyzer out, wave a yagi around, give them a bit of a show and tell them that he'd "neutralized" the harmful signals.
One case turned out to be quite different though - a guy was complaining that his kitchen cooktop element would start "speaking some unintelligible language" at the same time each night. He got there at the specified time, and sure enough, when the element was turned on, he heard a garbled voice coming straight from it. Turns out the contacts had corroded enough to form some kind of rudimentary rectifier, mixing with the 50Hz mains, and it was "receiving" the ham radio operator next door, who was active on an HF SSB net each night.
Interesting that there's two comments telling almost the exact same story, maybe both are talking about the same case?
@@MisterTalkingMachine Yeah, I wish I could remember more details, it was 20+ years ago. Maybe I got it wrong and it was just one of those ham radio urban legends that everyone heard somewhere, or maybe it is/was a fairly common occurrence. I've asked the other poster if it was in Australia or not, so maybe we can get to the bottom of it and find out if it was the same case..
It was commonplace to find that people who lived near a taxi company would pick up the base-to-taxi radio on bizarre objects such as tooth fillings - anything that might act as a rectifier.
I was once acting as boom-swinger for recording the sound on a video that we were making for a night school course. It was consumer equipment, so the mike cable was unbalanced earth-and-signal, rather than the +ve and -ve signal with an earthed screen of balanced signals. Suddenly through my headphones I heard "One nine for a copy. Breaker break. Ten four" etc - this was in the days of CB radio. Maybe someone had an illegal (in the UK) 27 MHz *AM* CB radio. Or maybe something was detecting FM. That was cured by rigging up a wire from the audio screen (sleeve of plug) to a convenient earth - I think I used a water tap. I'd have plugged the camera into the mains to achieve the same effect of earthing the signal ground, but we'd forgotten to pack the mains PSU. It was a really Heath Robinson setup with a bit of wire trailing across the ground, but it did the job - or maybe the CBer got fed up and stopped CBing ;-)
I had a much worse problem when I was videoing my sister's wedding. The mike was on a fairly long length of unbalanced cable. I'd tested it all beforehand, but when I tried it with the mike on the top table and the camera nearby, I got horrendous RF interference. I discovered that the camcorder was OK if it was driven off batteries but not if powered from the mains, so I bunged a big battery (already low on charge from the earlier filming) on to charge, hoping that by the end of the meal, it would have enough power to last for the speeches. I was fine, but I was panicking to begin with. Not sure why it only happened in the location - because I'd already tested the same cable, mike and camera, with camera on mains as well as battery, at home several days before, and it was fine.
@@MisterTalkingMachine Yeah, the difference being one was a Gas oven, and Electric in the case above, which makes it all the more intriguing..🤔
@@Mortimer50145 I've also done a fair bit of audio stuff myself (homebrew amps, speakers, recording setups etc) and can say I'm a fanatical supporter of balanced or digital audio wherever possible (and of overengineered grounding & shielding measures on audio gear, not just radio :D )
Back in the day, my B&O tube amplifier picked up the woodpecker transmission. After shielding the inside and using resistors with the shield and chassis it was still there but very minimal. Very annoying.
Love it! It's in the recording forever, like a ghost! I run a recording studio in a small town in Wisconsin, USA, and I've taken great pains to keep unwanted signals from invading the recording system. But once in a while there will be that mutha trucker with a super high gain CB set up who will just rip into system with a callout all dopplered out as he passes by the town. It's rare but it happens LoL!
Said trucker was probably sitting on a foot warmer that's what we used to call 1000W amps back in the day of 27meg illegal bk then and probably still are now, had a wilson shooting star vertical/horizontal beam at the time from memory .
I am an amature radio operator located in Reno, Nevada, U.S.A. KB7QOD. I have two HF rigs in my station which will transmit 100w and one 2m/70cm rig that will transmit at 50w. Last weekend (14 and 15 October 2023), was the Nevada QSO weekend. It also happened to be a party for my next door neighbors who had rented a pavilion and a pro audio system. Now, I know from working in radio for 30 years and doing my share of renting equipment, that cables are not usually maintained very well. I know all of my equipment is working perfectly (I have constant measurements on my transmissions). But I didn't want to interrupt their party, so I only made a couple of contacts while they were not using the rented sound system. It was a bummer weekend for me, but they had fun.
One small comment on the Manor story: VVV designates the start of a transmission or an ID loop, and GBR was indeed the callsign of the Rugby Time Station transmitter :-) And DE means "from" or "this is", but you know that 🙂
I was thinking that DE meant "de end" 😂
@@stepheneyles2198 I thought D(x) End
Actually, "VVV" is a designator for Testing, Testing, Testing....then "DE" for from.......and then the station call sign "GBR".
@@ronanzann4851 It's commonly used for both.
G4GHB.
So if the Rugby Clock signal stopped it would be pretty clear that the poop had hit the ventilator. Subs used to monitor the radio 4 Long-Wave transmitter. Both of those going at the same time would definitely be a cause for alarm.
I was lucky enough to get a guided tour of Rugby a few years back. The tour guides were all folks who'd worked at Rugby and some who still did.
They were telling us the they used to monitor the transmission quality by listening to the signal on it's way back round the world so they would get a qualitative measure of the signal a few seconds after transmission.
I remember something like that years ago with the BBC World Service at quite a high frequency, something around 24 MHz, The direct signal then a few seconds later a delayed weaker signal.
G4GHB.
Possible "Long Delayed Echoes"..??
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_delayed_echo#:~:text=Long%20delayed%20echoes%20(LDEs)%20are,number%20of%20proposed%20scientific%20origins.
@@bill-2018 Backscatter. We did these measurements at BBC Crowsley Park (the receiving site for BBC Monitoring Service). I can't remember exactly how or why, but it involved transmissions on one of the higher broadcast bands (21MHz?) from one of the BBC's sites (Daventry?) and measuring the delay on a scope.
@@Bartok_J Thank you for the reply.
Tubular Bells was recorded using a decent enough mixing console, but side A was done with the lowpass filters accidentally switched in - it's not an album for audiophiles. The upside is that the profits from the album paid for a new and now legendary Helios console, let us pause to genuflect here now.
Virgin records were very noisy. My brother reckoned they were recorded in crisp factory.
weird, side a has no bass
@@wyrdscyncedo you hear that? It sounds like Lars Ulrich laughing.
@@user-lp3cf5yn5b haha got you, poor jason , he may as well have been playing the maracas
Interesting insight. I've an old (1970's) pressing of TB and the bass is far stronger on side A than it is on the CD master - particularly the section at 4'42"; the second lower bass note completely disappears on the CD. The "Boxed" quad remaster seemed to get it right too. Seems to imply the filters were switched in on the final mix rather than all the way through the multitrack. There were far finer quality recordings from other studios of the same vintage though.
You never cease to amaze me with the excellent and varied subject matter that find and report on. Who says radio isn’t fascinating?! Thank you 😀
I am quite into all things Mike Oldfield and had no idea about this. In a later album at a time when he was not getting on with Richard Branson/Virgin, but was still contractually obligated to make albums for them had a deliberate hidden morse message of "F Off RB". Mike Oldfield himself announced that there was a hidden message and offered a cash reward for the first person who found it, partly because he was dissatisfied with the promotion that Virgin were giving him.
Long live the Amarok..
Richard Branson is weirdo, he deserves to get punked
Living with my gf in Des Plaines Illinois, near Chicago, most of the house acted as a recording studio. I was recording her singing and playing ukulele for "Tonight You Belong to Me" from the movie "The Jerk" with Steve Martin, and the cicadas were so loud outside that I couldn't not hear them even with the windows closed. So eventually I gave up, opened all the windows, and made the cicadas part of the song. You do what you have to do.
So incredibly cool, Lewis! In the 80s I was spending too much time in recording studios around Europe, and I vividly remember situations in which we would pick up RF in amps, etc., and would have to re-record tracks, sometimes many times over, because it would be picked up on tape. In some cases we wouldn't actually hear it while tracking but would notice it much later. I also remember hearing these stories about Tubular Bells and other recordings that supposedly had had some of the signals 'embedded' in the tracks, but I'd assumed they were just apocryphal. Fascinating stuff, cheers!
I used to play in pub bands in the 80s and the local taxi firm’s radio chatter coming through the valve amps was always a major issue during gigs.
I remember in the 70,s and 80’s original STANAG signals which hummed at the musical note E very similar to the droaning sitar tone in Canned Heat’s I’m On The Road Again. The classic STANAG even showed up in Star Wars Empire Strikes Back in1980. I even played my own guitar to it in the 80’s
Another EXCELLENT episode, Lewis! How on earth to you produce such varied content?! Totally fascinating. All the best, Rob in Switzerland
As a huge Mike Oldfield fan and an huge radio nerd, you made a video just for me!
According to Branson tubular bells didn't sell because no one would play a 45m track on the radio untill the legend John peel played it. That's what got people listening.
For a while I had a faint radio signal coming out of the center speaker of the surround sound set that's connected to my speaker. I tried recording it with my phone but its microphone wasn't sensitive enough. I could hear people talking to eachother, though.
When I twisted the volume knob of the set, the voices were gone. I think the resistor in the volumeknob was a bit wonky in places. It was a weird experience.
Very interesting indeed keep up
The great work , this reminds me of the eighties when
I was doing a disco at a major fire station hall above the station , they got a shout and the then AM signals broke through our public address system very loudly indeed !
I really appreciate this. Tubular Bells was my best mates favourite album, and I know this would've blown him away.
Great memories,
Thank You 🙏
VVV is and was the standard "test" signal in CW, ringway. The stations call was just GBR. But nice finding nevertheless!
Thanks for the info!
Neat stuff...but if you want signals as PART OF the music, checking out Karlheinz Stockhausen's works from 1965 to 1972 reveals a cornucopia of this on "Prozession", "Hymnen", "Spiral" and of course "Kurzwellen".
Other less-desirable signals made it onto loads of records over the years, with one of the biggest nuisance signals on UK releases being the Soviet navigation system Alfa.
If you isolate the top frequencies on many British records from the late 1960s up into the late 1970s, you'll notice some high-pitched tones up around 12 kHz that changes between two pitches. That's Alfa. Sometimes you'd get the same thing but on different frequencies...that would be the USA's competing Omega system. GPS obsoleted these during the 1980s along with LORAN-C on 100 kHz.
...and as far as chasing DX reception goes, good riddance! The LORAN-C system used many transmitters running a megawatt-plus and made this gawdawful buzzsaw noise that obliterated other signals across about 20 kHz of bandwidth!
But the message is perfectly clear if you have Novice-level Morse skills: "This is GBR Rugby testing". This is also known as "sending Vs" since "V" is an ITU abbreviation to note that the signal is for testing purposes. Nothing mysterious there.
But Alfa was such a problem that desk manufacturers eventually came up with very selective notch filters to eliminate ONLY the Alfa tones (Omega frequency filters also existed) from the program audio, eliminating that problem.
de WX9T ar 😊
this stuff is truly magical. Your channel brings back the childlike wonder & awe of the spooky cold war era. Reminds me how much I have forgotten. It's quite inspiring!
It amazes me how you get your information and turn it into a story great video as always 👍
Absolutely fascinating video, bravo. Just subscribed.
Years ago i read about Tubular Bells and tried to tune to it with sdr sharp and found it.
Still.. Really really cool!!
Oldfield purposely used morse code on one of his final albums for Virgin. Spelt out “Eff off RB”, shows what he thought of them at that point
Yes, this reminded me of that. Found out via the channel This Exists. Morse code in music.
His last one Heavens Open under name Michael Oldfield song after song was not at all veiled attack on virgin.
@parakart That's f%$#ing awesome...
That story probably inspired a "joke" from the band Evanescence, when they were recording "My immortal" they found that on one of their keyboards, when a key was left pressed and the note was fully decayed, the keyboard produced a faint signal similar to a Morse code made of random "lines" and "dots", that signal was included in "My Immortal" starting from after the first chorus throughout the song 😀
Correction, it's only heard after the choruses when it's playing that "stardust" effect 😀
Reminds me my uncles stereo system would pick up the local airport beacon but only with the amp switched off you could hear it faintly on his speaker system.
wow. for some reason my cat was totally fascinated by this video.
he didn't move a bit and stared at the screen for the entire 7 minutes 😀
well done!
You also have a hidden signal. My comment is 'Ringway'. I thank you for your attention to this. My ears are still so finely attuned to CW Morse after all these years.
How can someone find something so precise as this, while "fiddling around" This is insane!!!... great video!
Brilliant little video Lewis….Thanks 👍
Sir, you are a superior anorak(and I mean that as a compliment). Wonderful niche knowledge likes this enriches us all! Great mate!👍🏻
I've actually known about this for a few years because VWestlife covered this same topic. Very interesting. I have The Very Best of Tubular Bells on CD, I don't have the equipment or knowledge to test this myself, but track 1 is Tubular Bells, so this radio signal is most likely in that track.
How interesting! I'm going to re-listen to my albums for more secret signals! 😁😁
Hello Lewis, sometime in the late 1960s my tech college arranged a visit and tour of part of the Rugby site concerned with the “higher” parts of the frequency spectrum. At that time I was living not far from Crystal Palace in south east London and the top of the CP TV mast was clearly visible. On many occasions I had BBC Tv sound and the frame buzz appear on my loudspeakers via the stereo amplifier that was acting as the receiver/demodulator. To get reduce or get rid of the offending signal required rearranging the speaker wiring.
I’ll have to have a close listen to my vinyl copy of Tubular Bells.
Best wishes from Oxfordshire 73s & Good DX
In the 1980's I did a gig at a primary school (for the teachers and parents) close to the Crystal Palace tx, to my embarrassment the Morecome and Wise show could be heard loud and clear through my Vox AC30 every time we stopped playing! 🤣
I had a multiplexed digital signal from RAF Greatworth on my FR stereo receiver in the late 1970s.
It was common when pubs had a disco and a taxi pulled up outside, "Taxi for Steve".
Victor Victor Victor is a TEST SIGNAL - Usually used when tuning-up a transmitter piror to use, or if requested to aid a recceiving station in tuning their receiver; or test the the local oscillator/VFO to ensure the 1Khz audio modulation - carrier wave. Morse transmission generally only use the A1 modulation = an on/off keying of the carrier wave; thus 'CW' is often a term used for morse transmission; esp in maritime and Radio Ham circles. Any UK armed-forces/maritime Radio Operator or Radio Ham would know this common test signal.
IT WAS/IS NOT USED FOR ANYTHING ELSE.
Note: In spoken morse language - when voicing a morse character one ALWAY uses - dit (for dot) and dah (for dash).
The usual format for a morse test signal was:
Character Phonetic [morse characher] = MEANING
============================================================================================
V x 3 VICTOR x 3 [ dit-dit-dit-dah ] x3 = TEST SIGNAL
DE DELTA ECHO [dah-dit-dit dit ] = THIS IS...
'CALL SIGN' (for Rugby 16Khz VLF )
GBR GOLF BRAVO ROMEO [dah-dah-dit dah-dit-dit-dit dit-dah-dit] = STATION CALL/IDENT
AR ALFA ROMEO (combined) [dit-dah-dit-dah-dit] (comb) = OUT (usuall written as ' + ' )
==============================================================================================
OPSIG = OPERATION SIGNAL - in the above case - DE (THIS IS) and AR (OUT +) but also include =
K KILO [dah-dit-dah] = OVER (over to you)
R ROMEO [dit-dah-dit] = ROGER (understood/received]
CQ x 3 CHARLIE QUEBEC x3 [dah-dit-dah-dit dah-dah-dit-dah] = (calling) ALL/ANY STATION
DX DELTA XRAY [dah-dit-dit dah-dit-dit-dah] = ALL INTERNATIONAL STNS
(The latter two commonly used in conbination by Radio Amateur stations when seeking new contacts).
// ---- [dah-dit-dit-dit-dah] (combined) = (message) BREAK
AS ALFA SIERRA [dit-dah-dit-dit-dit] (combined} = WAIT
There are many more 'opsigs' in the list, and meanings can differ between forces and civilian stations. Such as:
IMI INDIA MIKE INDIA [dit-dit-dah-dah-dit-dit] (combined) = ? (interrogative) in civilian use.
'' '' '' = REPEAT (miltary)
INT -- [dit-dit-dah-dit-dah] (combined) = INTERROGATIVE (military only)
==============================================================================================
CQ DX DE DELTA ECHO ECHO BRAVO ZULU OUT+
All fine and dandy but NO NEED TO RANDOMLY SCREAM in a a reply
One day back in the early 80s when I was living in the south of France, I suddenly heard voices in my front room. At the time my TV and radio were turned off but the radio was receiving police messages and they were as clear as if I was sitting in the police car. It makes you wonder what goes in the other direction. I also had a wah-wah pedal on my guitar which would pick up radio stations and changing the position would change the channel.
Where do you find the time to research and produce these videos Lewis? (Especially so if you have a full-time job and no private income.) Keep up the great work!
Lewis is a deep cover operative for the BBC, He tracks down unlicensed TV sets :)
hi
Hi Lewis. Greetings from a sunny, but cool Portland, Oregon. Good stuff as always. I always look forward to seeing what the next video covers. 73 my friend
Absolutely fascinating! Makes you wonder what other "information" is lurking in recordings.
In the 70s and 80s Rugby had Marconi H1141 fast-tune 10kW HF transmitters which were shared between the Royal Navy and Portishead Radio (GKA).
I remember one time, back in the 90's, when my family & I were driving North through Marshall, MO, & we passed a studio & transmitter site that belongs to KMMO 1300AM & 102.9FM, we could briefly hear what the radio stations were broadcasting even with the car radio not being turned on.
I am guessing that this was due to the metal in the car acting as an antenna\speaker & picking up either the radio stations AM, or FM, signal.
This, so far, has only happened once!
this reminds me of a recording of a hyundai ad where the master tape had audio from the radio comms, it was on cathode ray dude's channel.
I also remember trying to listen to ULF "Whistlers" as a kid. I hooked my long wire antenna to the mic input of my hi fi tube preamp through a 4 pole hi pass filter I built to get rid of AC hum. I think the corner frequency of the filter was 1 KHz, but it's been awhile. Anyway I did not hear any whistlers, but as I could hear up to 22 KHz at that age, I heard those ULF Morse code transmissions.
the VVV is typical used as an indicator of a shore station, before a callsign and some specific frequencies, that the station is working on. DE means "This Is", so the sentence "VVV GBR" means that GBR is on the frequencie and is ready to receive any trafic.. Also the VVV is used as a kind of test-signal, typical transmittet from a station to another, under change of different antennas so the signal can be picked up better. The order to send this VVV signal is QSV... with rgds fm oz1fjb - ou2v.
Amazing piece of history. Many thanks Lewis.
This reminds me of something that happened to me as a kid messing about with a tubeamp with a self built pentode gain stage, i had left the thing turned on while going to the loo when i suddenly heard something i instantly knew what it was, the station callsign/name jingle for one of the FM radio broadcast stations where i live. This left me puzzled as i did not have any form or radio receiver turned on at the time, but i eventually found the problem, a bad screen grid capacitor, as after replacing this i never heard any radio stations again.
Still to this day i have no answer or clue as to how a single pentode based audio gain stage could have received or yet decoded a FM radio signal without any form of tuning elements or if mixing. The only possible way i could see is if my gain stage was actually oscillating due to crappy wiring and the screen grid somehow acting as the FM detector/discriminator diode due to the bad decoupling cap.
I know this sounds impossible, and i agree, had it been an AM station it would have made much more sense, as AM stations were heard all the day even on some modern day audio/guitar amplifiers/pa setups near strong stations. So either someone rebroadcasted a recording of the particular radio station on AM, or i somehow managed to invent the first ever single tube FM receiver.
fascinating thanks for posting
There are all kinds of spurious and interesting audio artefacts to be discovered in old recordings, usually at frequencies in the upper regions which lie outside most people's hearing range (16kHz would be a good example).
I am interested in comparing the audio spectra of remastered or remixed albums, to scientifically measure the differences.
The remastered version of Can's Tago Mago (1971) is a good case in point. The originally published version was made from a production master. That production master was created (or dubbed) somewhere that had an operational CRT screen (like a TV), because in the spectrographic display there is a constant 16kHz tone, which equates to the EM field given off by such old fashioned monitors. The tone is absent from the remaster.
Furthermore, on the original version there is a section where a dog is heard barking. The reason for the dog's behavior can be explained by comparing the original with the remaster.
The original does not include any information above that 16kHz signal I mentioned before. It's likely that some kind of filter was used to ensure the cutting of the vinyl would not cause the cutting edge of the mastering lathe to become too hot (which is what happens when cutting high frequency waves into lacquer).
A couple of seconds after the dog barks a descending synthesizer tone, or possibly a taped effect, appears in the mix at around 15kHz, and quickly descends into everyday human hearing range.
However, on the remastered version the signal can be seen originating at 20kHz at exactly the point the dog barks, indicating that the dog could hear the signal and the producer thought it would be fun to include it.
Did he know he was recording the signal as well as the dog's response? Difficult to know, because Holger Czukay (the band's primary technician) wouldn't have had access to a spectrographic display to check such a thing.
As a kid I lived less than a mile from the now defunct Bartley transmitter near Southampton. Radio 4 was readily received on any amplifier with an unterminated input. There was no need for messing around with crystal earpieces on my early crystal sets. Mine would happily drive a pair of Wharfdales!
Interesting, my favourite album of all time that I have been playing regularly for the last 50 years and never knew that. Can you hear it on any of the various versions of the album released on vinyl, CD, tape or downloads? I have most of them.
Hard rock, heavy metal, grunge, and the like favor very high gain circuits for their distorted guitars. Shielding for extraneous signals, like fluorescent lights is a big deal.
Many neighbours of the defunct 1 MW VLF transmitter "NSS" at Annapolis, Maryland (East coast USA) claimed that the signal from the transmitter was so powerful that it could be picked up in dental fillings!
There’s a hidden message in this video. Can you find it?
00:05 .... "COMMENT RINGWAY" in Morsecode 🙂 73 de DL1LAJ
@RingwayManchester >>>
*_"Epstein didn't kill himself"?_*
🤭🤭🤭
Well, with my still budding Morse skills 2x "COMMENT RINGWAY" at the start. I estimate, from ear around 20 wpm, because I can copy it with pencil and the end of what I can copy is about 25 and I was writing quite quickly for that already, the tone is a bit lower than I am used to listen, I put it around 700 Hz, this must have been below 600 Hz. The sound of it doesn't seem to be given by hand, so I assume from the very regular tones, that you were using a generator for that, it had a slight "click" to it, means a steep transition turning on and off, which usually is not done this way by the rigs I know. But I can be wrong with all of that of course, at least a paddle is possible, but still I don't think so because of the slight click. It was very, very regular and usually even with a paddle people tend to build up some kind of "first" and the transition of modern and even older radio equipment is softer than what we can hear here.
But I'm stressing my skills here on such a short message.
Well done. The DE is in Morse the abbreviation of "from", the VVV are the typical as "QSV" named V to signal the beginning of a transmission and to allow to work as a measure to tune to that frequency, as well as synchronize to the speed which is to expect from that station. "TTT" is intro for emergency "SOS", "XXX" is for priority messages like weather warnings and "RRR" is used in HAM Radio for emergencies on land, together with QRR or QRRR instead of SOS, so VVV is the softest of the three levels, You can hear my signal daily on 40m in the UK, sending with an old Junker M.T. Morse key. Great find! Will listen to that track again.
73 DE DL7HH
Buy me more coffees ?
PAUL IS DEAD... PAUL IS DEAD...
My first student flat was next to Newcastle General Hospital and my HH solid state amp used to pick up the Ambulance Dispatchers radio signal. I never recorded it onto a best-selling record though…
Great video again Lewis! The best from LB1NH 🙂
To this day we still have cassettes we made recording music broadcasts from North America and sometimes we could get BBC radio London, and happen to pickup the Duga Over the Horizon Radar or the Wood Pecker. We found a filter kit at Radio Shack to mitigate it for the most part. Some nights it was just over powering.
Tubular Bells is a great album. It's best listened to slightly after midnight while laying on your back in your best friends basement on shag carpet. Usually, it will have the best effect if you are around 17 years old and accompanied by your girlfriend/future wife/soulmate. A truly memorable experience that will last a lifetime. Oh, and, yes, we did hear the Morse code that night.
Wonderful! I have that album by the way, first pressing bought at HMV in London during my first visit to London in 1972. I also remember my father used to copy records on tape. At that time I had an mobile CB radio connected to a mobile CB whip antenna. At the time CB was very illegal over here in Holland. While he was recording again, I operated that CB radio. And, consequently, ruined the recording. Funny though he didn’t noticed it while recording but it was on the tape. It marked the end of my short lived CB radio fun.
Fantastic. I kind of guessed where this was going. How cool.
Reminds me of when me and my brother used to listen to RUC radio communications on an old radiogram during the height of the Troubles.
I'm a bit of a music nerd and a comms nerd so that made it even more interesting, thanks.
Very interesting , thanks Lewis !
Fantastic
Who would know unless you posted it here?
That's pretty bonkers. Must be a lot of recordings made over the years where this happened.
When i worked in a music club back in the 90's sometimes the bingo radio mike in a separate building next door used to bleed through some wireless guitar pack receivers that people brought in. That was pretty funny 😆
"number 9"... "number 9"
I once set up antennas in the early 2000s to send FHSS signals from one office to another so that a both could share a single T1 line.
I had 3-watt transmitters and 21dB antennas, reaching about 1 mile.
The biggest problem was that a number of businesses using DSSS were in the neighborhood and I had to punch my signal through them!
Had all the traffic from 2 stock brokerages to filter!
Tubular bells was the first album I ever bought.
Still love it.
I have a kilowatt AM broadcast transmitter in the same building as a couple studios. I am constantly chasing RF out of wires/equipment shielding or not so I feel their pain.
seems like a big crew made this video, well done finding that out.
British band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark used actual shortwave recordings in some of their songs.
Hello. Do you know where in the album it is in Tubular Bells? How many minutes in? I don't recall it, it must be very subtle as you say. I'm an audio engineer and am interested in trying to isolate it with Izotope RX advanced post production suite.
does anyone know what it is?
listening to SDR i sometimes hear a tone that spans all frequencies. sounds like a typical 'space laser' from movies. starting high in pitch and quickly descending.
what is it?
Well that explains why that has been in my head for some 50 years. As a Amateur Radio operator, I heard that on air.
I love seeing new hidden things in music's fr
the added DE in the last transmission means "This is" in standard military communications. Often a message with start with the Station Identifier call sign, the the subject, and text body, followed by a confirmation of which station it was from. Hence the V V V DE G B R
more than anything in this video I enjoy looking at thenall long wave antennas that works so well constructed for the frequencies they needed. Now an embassy roof is lucky to get by with A 3.TO 30 mega cycle log periodic antenna that would be somewhat directional and boost signal somewhat should BE probably good enough for HF backup status in the new satellite communicating world.
Fascinating!
I'm not familiar with either albums (probably my age) but am super interested in videos with info like this, another banger of a video
And also an education in albums I gotta check out
This channel has made me start to get into radio and read espionage books and other sources(true story ish movies etc)
And I can't remember why I even subscribed(I think maybe a radio review as I was gonna go camping w friends) as it had nothing to do with my interests... It was just high quality content
Hopefully you someday cover the non sms using phone communications like Lora n stuff, though I doubt any spy stuff has happened with it yet, as meshtastic and such are so new for long range communication (hence LoRa for Long Range)
id strongly recommend you check out tubular bells, im a techno head. But I appreciate good music when i hear it, and that albums superb.
@@denisohbrien for sure I will, I love all music from alt rock, to heavy metal to old rap to gangster to modern, heck I even love some dubstep and techno, if you name it, I enjoy it, if it's good, as there's stuff I dislike in every genre.... Except country not a single song I like.. can't stand that, despite marrying someone whom it's their favorite and almost only listened to genre besides emo... And thank heavens for that, or I'd need ear plugs on car rides
But I'm 1000% checking out both albums mentioned in this video, when the video says "as you're all familiar with (album)" it's then that I *MUST* listen to it
In Norway, at least, there was a series of 5 pulses at something around 15kHz that was the shutoff signal for the stations that rebroadcasted the national TV station NRK. You just heard that signal late in the evening, after last ørogramme, when they typically showed the TV clock or the test picture - then snow and no signal. Probably also swedish television and then probably many other broadcasters used a similar signal to shut off the network, too. There is a Swedish Christmas cartoon called "Karl Bertil Jonson’s julafton" or "The Tale of Karl-Bertil Jonsson's Christmas Eve") (Christopher's Christmas Mission) where his father falls asleep in front of the television, where we hear that signal, most probably modified so it would actually shut down the transmitters at Christmas Eve ( 24/12)! 😄
The cartoon is by the way, very nice and makes to you cry a little bit, and for us TV nerds, it is a nice detail that they even included the shutoff signal that people who watch all the TV they could ( which wasn ‘t very much in the nordic countries in the. 60s and 70s) probably must have heard a lot of times, without realising exactly what the 5 beeps were meant for.
So is the signal audible on the Tubular Bells record? Or was it dropped from the final mix, staying resident only on the multi-track master tapes?
The recordings are taken from the released album. You just have to know where to listen
@@RingwayManchester Thank you. A headphones challenge!
Reminds me of finding out I could receive the local rock station by touching a patch cable plugged in to an amp. Always thought it was convenient that it was our rock station, but then again it was also the closest station by a long shot.
In 70s while in my bedroom atop Summit St In Fairport N.Y. my dental filling used to pick up AM radio broadcasts.
Intriguing stuff, thank you! Cherwell pronounced Charwell \m/
There's some interesting radio sound recordings at the start of Spirit of the age by Hawkwind. I'm sure part of it is a shortwave stations chimes, but have never been able to identify it. Have listen to it. It's on TH-cam.
I've wondered if those sounds were actually "a thing" or just artistic noises too.
@@AnyoneForToast possibly, but I'd love to know.
Interesting video, thanks.
Somebody living near Droitwich said his hi-fi was picking up the radio station.
I suggested it could be his speaker wires acting as an aerial and he could try different lengths. He looked at me as though I was stupid.
I then suggested he put 1,000 picofarad capacitors across the speaker leads at the speaker and amplifier. I never knew if he did.
It could also be the components inside rectifying the signal like a crystal set and amplifying it
G4GHB.
That might make sense. Radio signals getting into the speaker wires and feeding into the negative feedback circuit in the power amp?
Another song you could look into is Stranded in Iowa by Manford Mann. Seems to have a simulated VOLMET and I’ve always wondered if it was genuine.
“Stranded in Iowa” is a song by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Unfortunately, I could not find any information about the song containing Morse code. However, I did find a post on Reddit where a user asked about using Morse code in a song 1. Another user mentioned that the bass line for all the verses in “Stranded in Iowa” is SOS on a high note (C, if I recall correctly)
@@chevboy4.813 Nice try, ChatGPT
Hmmm, yeah I can remember my dads car had an AM radio in it and on LW we could easily receive this Morse code transmission if you tuned right to the low end of the LW band. I often wondered where it was from. Nowadays the old Rugby radio sites fast becoming a new town called Hamilton.
Depending on where you live, it's possible to receive the Chiltern aeronautical beacon on 277kHz on an ordinary longwave radio. It sends its callsign - CHT - continuously in slow Morse. It's located in a wood near a village called Maple Cross in Hertfordshire.
Good one. Thanks