Back to the DX!

Every so often, weird things happen on the radio, and television for that matter. Sometimes it is man made, like interference caused by a lady using an old hair dryer in the house next door, and sometimes man made means it was intentionally done (or unintentionally) for a prank or just a mistake.

This page offers some insight into just how weird broadcast radio and TV can be. Below are collected samples of scary radio and television pictures that will forever haunt you.

RADIO
The following clips are sorted by date:

The Russian Squeaky Wheel - recorded off an SDR in Poland during the evening (local) and day (there).

More scary morse code, recorded off of a web-based software defined radio in the Netherlands. This is labeled as UZB-V from Russia. The beeping is normal, what is in the background isn't.

Scary Morse Code: This was recorded on the Grundig S350 radio. Average morse code on shortwave in the 7.030 MHz area. Recorded March 2013.

Heavy Aurora Flutter: on WWV, 5 MHz. This was recorded off of the Grand Junction Global Tunner. Aurora was visible as far south as Ohio on this date. Recorded 10-24-11 at 8:22 PM MST.

Creepy Korean Jamming and other audio from Chris Kadlec. This will take you to an outside site.

UVB-76, The Russian "Buzzer" heard on Global Tuners from Hannover, Germany. This video was recorded on 2-10-11, at 9 PM UTC.

Strange interference on 610 partially caused by an external hard drive of all things, on 2-6-11.

Old time radio church program or what? - On the same day as the possible broadcast intrusion below, KTWO 1030 of Casper, Wyoming was airing some very strange programming, as you can hear. This clip has been edited to contain segments of the show that was on (at approximately 11:30 PM MST 12/6/2010) followed by the station ID, which occurred at roughly 11:57, leaving three minutes of dead air. The first half of this clip was recorded on an old pioneer tuner, while the second (with the ID) was recorded off the Grundig S350 radio. (MP3 file 1.3 mb)

Broncos broadcast intrusion? - During the tail end of the radio broadcast of the Broncos Vs. Kansas City Chiefs football game on 12/6/2010, stations across the network and probably even the flagship KOA were surprised when this happened. Was it intentional, or was it a mistake? You decide. Note, if you listen carefully, after the mishap happens you can hear people in the background asking "what was that?" This game was an away game which ended up with the Chiefs winning as you will hear. Was someone playing a joke on the voice of the Broncos? As you can hear, he played it off pretty well. (MP3 file, 900kb).

TELEVISION

November 22, 1987, perhaps the scariest or weirdest of clips from television past came during a PBS broadcast of Doctor Who, on Chicago's WTTW (Analog 11 at the time). The signal hijacking, perhaps best known as "The Max Headroom Incident" was seen by thousands as the station's engineers were unable to catch the mistake in time. A similar hijacking occurred earlier in the evening on one of the most famous Chicago television stations, WGN, although its engineers were able to stop the broadcast seconds after it happened. Here is the full clip (via Youtube).