Great mysteries of life

[dreamer_easy]

Hmm, well, neither Project Moonbase nor Destination Moon is the movie with the skeletons on the moon. The quest continues... (ETA: Lance suggested Moon Zero Two, which does have a skellington on the moon!)

... in the meantime: when we lived in Melbourne (85-86), I used to sit in the car at night and play around with the CB radio. If you twiddled the dial all the way to the right you could sometimes catch a nasal electronic voice announcing "Three three seven five. Three three seven five." Before and after this mysterious statement, there'd be six electronic boops in two groups, high-low-low, high-low-low. The whole thing used to creep the heck out of me.

I've wondered if it was a VOR station, though I think you'd expect some Morse code and probably someone saying "Melbourne Airport", or something along those lines. (CB Radio is around 27 MHz, VHF starts at 30 MHz, so it's not impossible.)

Any thoughts, peeps?

Comments

[nevryn.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a Numbers Station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

It does, rather although the same numbers over and over night after night isn't much of a message... I wonder if it was a ham radio station?

[nevryn.livejournal.com]

Unless, of course, that's the message for 'no message'. Which is sort of what I'd expect for a default.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Ooh!

I suppose it could've been announcing a station at 3375 kHz.

[jblum.livejournal.com]

Didn't we already decide that's what it was? I know the shortwave station at U-Md had a repeater whenever it wasn't actually in use -- but it announced its call letters as well as frequency.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Yah, that's the weird thing - a VOR transmitter should have Morse letters, ham radio call signs are all letters.

[tlttlotd.livejournal.com]

That sounds about right for a null message.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Are you certain it was a movie? I recall a James Hogan novel (title fails me, but it's the first of the Gentle Giants of Ganymede trilogy) which features modern astronauts finding a somethingsomething thousands of years old human skeleton in a spacesuit.

[pedanther]

See, now, when Kate said "skeletons on the moon", I immediately pictured the skeletons walking around, like in that Ray Harryhausen movie.

(Possibly this is a sign that it's past my bedtime.)

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

All VOR and DME transmissions are in morse, so it is not that.

If it was always the same numbers, then I'd say it was a marine beacon of some kind.

[matthewwolff.livejournal.com]

I recommend the Skeptoid Podcast episode #107 from 7-1-08: Spy Radio Numbers Stations. It will have your answers. Well, not the skeletons on the moon one. ;)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

OMG the Lincolnshire Poacher sounds a HELL of a lot like what I heard in Melbourne. BRRRRRRR!