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srean 9 hours ago

Does this move around geographically ? Triangulating broadcast location is a well understood craft.

rustyhancock 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Shortwave radio is more challenging than you might imagine.

Near to the transmitter it's received by ground wave, further it's scattered off the ionosphere. In-between it's undetectable due to the skip zone. This might also explain why Amelia Earhart went missing [1]

Coverage is obtained from multipath and reflections. Leading to variable strength and timing. Not as bad as DXing on HF with low power but much harder than you might imagine.

Fine for someone to transcribe some numbers but useless for people trying to identify sources.

So locally you get an apparent direction to the source which is clearly not the source.

Add to that the complex local terrain and a well placed number stations can be very difficult to locate with precision.

Edit: unrelated but interesting there are some mysteries in HF transmission including long delayed echoes where a signal takes far longer than reasonable to travel out and back over several seconds [0] which given its travelling light milliseconds is a conundrum.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_delayed_echo

[1] https://youtu.be/zTDFhWWPZ4Q?si=Ib8jfbdNP-sLHM0B

red_admiral 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I would guess that the combined EU/NATO counterintelligence forces could find the station if they wanted to, especially for the rough location in the article.

EDIT: apparently the source is on a U.S. military base in Germany (other posts on this topic). Looks like its "ours" then.

Supermancho 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My father regailed tales of his college years where it was a game to have a HAM radio operator start broadcasting and to have teams try to find where they were hiding, first.

More challenging? Not really. It does require multiple boots on the ground to do it.

BenjiWiebe 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, more challenging. Ham radio fox hunting is usually VHF/UHF. Waaay easier to direction-find, since the signal isn't bouncing off the ionosphere, and also the much shorter wavelength means that you can get highly directional antennas that are small enough to be held, and don't need to be 50 feet in the air to work well.

misnome 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Presumably doing it locally within a known few mile radius is different from nation-scale broadcast areas bounced from god-knows-where?

Supermancho 9 hours ago | parent [-]

If you can receive a shortwave signal, you can triangulate the source.

adrian_b 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Besides the problem caused by reflections and by the fact that unless you are very close to the transmitter you do not receive a direct wave but one reflected from the ionosphere, there is an additional difficulty.

Antennas with high directivity, which are needed for accurate triangulation, must be very big in the shortwave range (wavelength from 100 meter to 10 meter). Moreover, if they are too big it would be difficult to move them, to be able to measure an angle.

So traditional triangulation is inaccurate in this frequency range.

With modern technologies, using highly accurate synchronized clocks, one could distribute shortwave antennas over a large area, to create a synthetic aperture array, enabling a precise triangulation. However this would be expensive. An amateur would certainly not have such a thing. I doubt that even a state would bother to build such a thing, because it would not be worthwhile.

While precise triangulation of a shortwave transmitter from far away is very difficult, such a transmitter would not be hard to find during a local search wherever it is placed, because there not only the direction, but also the intensity gradient of the signal would allow finding it.

srean 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reflections will pose a problem though.

Two receivers of the same signal may not be from the same proximate source. One could from the original antenna the other from a reflection. Both could be reflected but by different reflectors. Even if the proximate source was the same for both the receivers, triangulation might yield the location of a virtual image of the original source.

BTW I am just going by geometry and may be way off because radiowaves behave quite differently compared to visible light.

One might need effectively the inverse of beamforming to nail it.

rustyhancock 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Exactly I have friends who have had voice contacts reflecting off aurora at VHF

srean 8 hours ago | parent [-]

That made my day. Thanks for the laughs.

misnome 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

See content of post you initially replied in the context of:

> Shortwave radio is more challenging than you might imagine.

srean 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This seems to be a common treasure hunt game conducted by HAM clubs.

Supermancho 9 hours ago | parent [-]

That was it. Treasure hunt.

xanderlewis 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Also known as fox hunting.

8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
IAmBroom 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Multiple boots on Iranian ground is tricky for Americans right now.

srean 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks that was quite illuminating. I knew about ionospheric reflections to be a problem but not the others.

JohnFen 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The broadcast locations aren't really secret, and don't need to be.

srean 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Known locations can be taken out, no ?

JohnFen 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, but the locations of the big transmitters are in well-defended areas and smaller transmitters are easy to replace.

srean 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Nothing much in Iran is well defended from air I suppose.

Assuming, of course, the hypothetical that it's a signal emanating from Iran. The current fix seems to indicate Germany, in which case you would be correct.