What is the weirdest thing you have heard on Shortwave?

[sde-1104]

This is a tribute thread to the weird and wonderful spectrum I call shortwave. Shortwave can reach audiences world wide and is still used around the world, despite the internet taking over.

So what is the weirdest thing you have heard on shortwave?

Strange messages, noises or music post below!

Mine must of been a SW pirate playing D&B. It sounded very strange on a SW frequency.

Following that - number stations. Do spy's still need SW radios? Discuss!!

[scottishpirates]

Ive heard alsorts from afar 160m is good for that did you or did you not hear a call lol 20m good for constant dx .. I like dxing when its not full of high nose retards that seem to forget where they came from before having a ham license. ... most of them started like most of us on 11mts I will never be restricted by a licence for any band pirate tilll I die

[Sparki]

Ive heard number stations before and on MW too. I remember once hearing someone talking but with a voice changer about spies and life is "not what it seems" was scary! that was in the 90s, I barely listen these days as all I get is interference or poor signal.

[Steambod]

The weirdest thing I heard was a dog barking on 48m back in the 80s. Reckon the op was doing a live b/c and went to get a beer but left the mike on! About 5 mins of just the mutt
A weird thing I heard on FM in 1982 when prince wills was born and the press were 10 deep around buck house was a BBC talkback somehow coming through around 90MHz where I was listening in Stockwell. Wynford Vaughan Thomas describing how he'd just had a piss against the same tree he'd pissed against when prince charlie was born

[shuffy]

Snake charmer. Creepy.

[Gigahertz]

Two hams talking about there local radio club and slagging off all the members

[WEBB-TECH]

Two hams talking about there local radio club and slagging off all the members

haha superb!

[radio pamela]

I been hearing a weak station playing mostly classical music on 6400 khz 48 mb, unsure of location because could only hear it on the Austrian SDR, i hearf nothing on my own radio , be interesting to see if anyone else has heard anything?

[Albert H]

There are lots of southern Europe stations (mostly Italian) that pop up on 6.4 MHz. Some of them are frequency-agile, and if 6400 kHz is occupied, they go 20 or 40 kHz either side of the nominal 6400, so it's usually worth tuning around a bit. I can't recall any of them playing classical music, but it's bizarre to hear a voluble Italian bloke introducing Country and Western songs!

Some years ago, there was someone in Germany who experimented with FM on around 6.4MHz. On many AM receivers, it just sounded like very low modulation AM (slope detection), but with the right demodulator, it was surprisingly good!

It's worth getting into "DRM" - Digitale Radio Mondiale - which is a digital mode designed for use on medium wave and shortwave. There are a few pirates who use this mode, and the results are surprisingly good. I've heard French, Dutch, German, and Italian DRM pirates, and I believe Barney (WNKR) has tried it too. It's less susceptible to interference and fading, but it requires the correct hardware to receive it. There are standalone DRM receivers available (particularly from India, where it's becoming quite widely used), but they tend to be expensive. It can be decoded with a little bit of homebrew technology and a home computer.

The most bizarre thing I've ever heard on shortwave (apart from the strange "numbers" stations)? Probably Frank Zappa doing a show on "Radio Aeroplane" in the USA in the '80s. That was seriously weird!