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Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

rtl-sdr.com

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Re: Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

#2

Post by 1letterunixname »

And possibly intentional misuse for criminal and perhaps non-criminal activity too.

121.5 and 243 MHz are no longer officially monitored for voice distress signals, but I wonder if they're still being gathered on the fleet.

Perhaps the best mitigation, I suppose a reduced set of these signals are monitored for voice distress calls. The satellites should support geofenced/location-selective rejection of signals on 406 MHz and 1544.2 MHz identified as non-emergency traffic to prevent misuse by pirates, drugs dealers, and warlords coordinating attacks.

Re: Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

#3

Post by patrakov »

Quick summary:

> Many navigational and meteorological satellites carry a search and rescue (SAR) repeater which is intended to receive UHF emergency locator beacons and rebroadcast them in the L-band or higher. However the repeaters appear to be picking up all sorts of other signals from the ground, including voice transmissions.

Re: Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

#5

Post by superkuh »

somethingsaid wrote: post #4

Shouldn’t we link to the original YouTube video? This website just reposts it with no analysis, a bunch of ads, and some janky scroll hijacking.

It's text and not video. Just speaking personally I wouldn't have clicked on or commented on a youtube video link. rtl-sdr.com is pretty decent aggregator as far as hobby SDR goes despite their bias in promoting their custom rtl-sdr dongle.

Re: Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

#6

Post by somethingsaid »

superkuh wrote: post #5
somethingsaid wrote: post #4

Shouldn’t we link to the original YouTube video? This website just reposts it with no analysis, a bunch of ads, and some janky scroll hijacking.

It's text and not video. Just speaking personally I wouldn't have clicked on or commented on a youtube video link. rtl-sdr.com is pretty decent aggregator as far as hobby SDR goes despite their bias in promoting their custom rtl-sdr dongle.

Yeah, I understand the preference for text, and I’m not against the site itself for posting it (I don’t have enough knowledge to comment on its quality), but I think we should give credit where credit (and ad revenue) is due, and link to the original creator’s work where possible.

Re: Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

#9

Post by dweekly »

1letterunixname wrote: post #2

And possibly intentional misuse for criminal and perhaps non-criminal activity too. 121.5 and 243 MHz are no longer officially monitored for voice distress signals, but I wonder if they're still being gathered on the fleet. Perhaps the best mitigation, I suppose a reduced set of these signals are monitored for voice distress calls. The satellites should support geofenced/location-selective rejection of signals on 406…

What is your basis for a claim that 121.5 (guard) is unmonitored?

As a pilot I can say that claim is false - guard is very actively monitored everywhere in the United States. Were you referring to some other locations?

Re: Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

#10

Post by charcircuit »

acaloiar wrote: post #8

Few things evoke feelings of the early internet like intercepting unencrypted communications in the wild with off the shelf hardware and software. It's some how comforting to realize this is still possible today.

Considering how much progress that has been made in encrypting internet traffic radio seems painfully slow in evolving to be more secure.

Edit: specifically radio protocols not carrying internet traffic

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