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Hello friends,
let me tell you about some mysterous things that
happened to me recently and that nearly made me drive off the road on my way to
work.
As some of you know I am a friend of Irish folk
music (I play the fiddle in a folk-music band). There is a weekly radio show on
BBD 4 Radio Ulster featuring folk-music. This show can be downloaded on the
internet which is very convenient because what I do is to record it to an MP3
file and burn it onto a CD so that I can listen to it while driving to or back
from work.
I hadn't have time to listen fo the show for a
while, so about a week ago I took the CD containing the radio show of May
6, 2006 into my car and listened to it on my way to work. Column Sands, the
moderator, had just been in Australia and he brought some nice tunes and songs
with him that he played. There was a nice and sad song called "The Old
Station" (in the song a railway station was meant). Suddenly, during the chorus
in the middle of the song, I heard morse code! My first thougth was
that the DI2BO beacon transmission had been recorded on the CD but that was
impossible because all recording was directly digital inside the computer, so
there was no way to interfere with an analogue signal.
I stopped my car and re-wound the song. I
decoded the message "Old stations never die" ... it was obviously a recording
form an original radio transmission because noise could be heard in
the background. First I thought that somebody at the recording studio had played
this message onto the CD but later I checked another version of the song,
and there is no hidden message on it! So somebody at BBC must
have had mixed this CW message onto the transmissions. But
why?
The message rang a bell. I looked it up on the
internet and yes, I remembered. The last message of many of the coastal
radio stations on 500 kHz when they shut down a few years back was "OLD STATIONS
NEVER DIE, THEY JUST FADE AWAY".
Well, my 440 kHz experimental beacon DI2BO
is using an old MF ship radio transmitter build some 35
years ago ... it surely has seen a lot while travelling the seven seas. The
ship may have been wracked in the meantime, the station had been
decomissioned, the parts ending up on a flea market to be sold. It has been
waiting in my spare-part warehouse (some would say: electronics junkyard) until
the time was ready to apply for an experimental license for MF transmissions and
the station was put on the air again.
Some stations never die ...
Remember, on what date that BBC radio show was
transmitted? Yes, May 6th 2006, in the late evening.
Well, guess when I started DI2BO's transmissions
and what date I anounced it here on the web and on the reflector? Yes, indeed:
May 6th, 2006 (in the morning)!
Who in the world is sitting in BBC 4th technical
department and reads the reflector? Or was this just a mysterious chain of
incidences?
Best 73
Geri, DK8KW / DI2BO
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