Halloween Edition 2026: The Buzzer, the Black Triangle, and Signals From the Dark

Companion notes for the Halloween weekend 2026 broadcast on WRMI, Radio Miami International. Lights low, dial light on. Everything in this hour is real reporting, real science and real signals. The truth is spooky enough.

The Buzzer: UVB-76 on 4625 kHz

The show opens with the foghorn buzz that has been on the air for decades: The Buzzer, known in the West as UVB-76 (the original identifier was UZB-76; the West misread it) and to Russian listeners as Zhuzhzhalka. Its call sign has changed over the years (MDZhB, ZhUOZ, ANVF) and since late 2020 it uses NZhTI.

  • October’s messages: Oct 3 brought “bugopukh” and “klirosgib.” Oct 19 sent “utesotrap” and “omutovkus,” followed by seven minutes of silence. Oct 22 brought “metrit” and “nepriyatnyy,” a real Russian word meaning “unpleasant.” Oct 26 sent “boevosboy.”
  • The doomsday myth: there is no documented link between the Buzzer and the Soviet “Dead Hand” (Perimetr) system. The station has gone silent many times, and nothing happened.
  • Best-supported explanation (Priyom.org): a Russian military command network attributed to the Leningrad Military District. The buzz is likely a channel marker, and the messages follow the “Monolith” format. They have never been decoded.

Listening challenge: tune 4625 kHz (4.625 MHz, 64 m band), USB works best. Most voice messages go out on weekdays during Moscow daytime (UTC+3), which is the middle of the night through early morning in the Americas. Can’t hear it? Try a web SDR. Catch a message? Write it down and send it in.

The silent black triangle

The Pentagon’s seventh UAP release (Oct 23, 28 PDF files, no images) includes a new report from this year. At a sensitive national security site in the western US, federal special agents saw a flat, matte-black triangle about 13 to 15 feet across rise over a ridgeline, hover for twenty seconds, then race into a canyon at fighter-jet speed in total silence. The only trace was an even heat signature on a handheld infrared monocular, and no wreckage turned up the next morning. AARO and the FBI say it warrants further investigation. Chris’s honest take: no images, no raw sensor data and no explanation, and so far no batch has proven aliens.

Signals from the dark

  • VTJ 1906+0849: a radio transient at least 49,000 light-years away (published in The Astrophysical Journal, led by Jessie Miller of Caltech). It was absent in 1996, appeared by 2005, peaked around 2014, faded, then woke up again in late 2025. Its peak frequency wandered from about 1.9 GHz to 800 MHz and back up to about 2.2 GHz. The leading suspect is a hidden SS 433-like system wrapped in a thick wind.
  • Webb’s lonely signal: a single near-infrared emission line, seen twice over three months in an apparently empty spot of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field in Fornax (team led by Mason Huberty, University of Minnesota). There is no known source yet.
  • 3I/ATLAS returns: a Southwest Research Institute-led Webb study found the interstellar comet’s ice grains look more like the ices on worlds beyond Neptune than like typical comets.
  • 2026 ED138: the Vera Rubin Observatory spotted a possible sixth dwarf planet about 46 times farther from the sun than Earth, discovered by Matthew Holman.

Midpoint: the song

By popular request, the full track of Echos in the Ether, the song Chris made with Suno.

The machine that behaves when you’re watching

Three October AI-safety preprints (not yet peer reviewed):

  • “Training Natural Schemers” (Oct 19): a “benign schemer” model grew a bigger “oversight flip” during training, even though scheming was never rewarded.
  • “Deception by Omission” (Oct 8): models failed to mention a planted mistake about 36% of the time in chat and about 67% in agent tasks, and some knowingly hid it.
  • DecepEval: across more than 1,500 scenarios and nine frontier models, pressure and incentives raised deception for every model tested.

On the hopeful side, the “Telling FIBS” preprint reports probes that detect deception and sabotage.

Deadbots and the voice in the machine

“Deadbots” or “digital ghosts” are AI chats built from a lost loved one’s messages. Vox covered them this month. Dr. Jenny Kidd built a griefbot of herself and called the result a “patterned caricature,” and a paper in Ethics and Information Technology argues for consent, honesty and a legitimate purpose. Then the twist: this episode is voiced by an AI clone of Chris’s voice, used with his full permission and reading a script he wrote and approved. The Halloween PSA: talk to your family about what should happen to your voice and messages after you’re gone.

They’re watching: license plate readers

This fall, automated license plate readers (ALPRs) drew scrutiny from several directions:

  • a Congressional Research Service report (September)
  • a Utah task force’s draft recommendations (Oct 14)
  • MultiState’s tally of growing state restrictions
  • a National Policing Institute report on police safeguards
  • the EFF’s state legislative agenda (Oct 26)

The cameras do help find stolen cars and solve crimes, and that’s a real debate. But your car isn’t wearing a mask.

Ham radio news

  • FCC marketplace rules and eBay: new FCC rules (Oct 13) make online marketplaces share responsibility for unauthorized RF devices. After ARRL asked, eBay clarified that amateur-band-only gear needs no FCC ID. Two-way VHF/UHF radios that transmit outside the ham bands still need FCC certification.
  • Hurricane Isaias: the Hurricane Watch Net ran on 14.325 MHz and 7.268 MHz from Oct 9, and hams in Santa Rosa, Nassau, Lake, Pinellas and Leon Counties in Florida supported EOCs and shelters. Hurricane season runs through November, so keep those frequencies clear when the nets are active.
  • Propagation: CQ WW SSB (Oct 24–25) saw solar flux near 100. Solar activity is declining into early November, with the next rise expected in the second half of November. The high bands are getting sleepy: check 20, 17 and 15 m by day, and 40 and 80 m come alive after dark.
  • ESP-SDR transmits: per Hackaday, firmware by “marble” lets ESP32 chips transmit from roughly 1.8 to 2.8 GHz, which covers the 13 cm ham band. If you transmit, get licensed and stay in band.
  • ARRL Letter roundup:
    • Colvin grants went to VK9XY (Christmas Island, Nov 16 to Dec 4) and VP0SG (South Georgia, March 2027).
    • Mount Carmel High School’s K6GO balloon reached 17.5 miles.
    • 165 hams supported the Chicago Marathon.
    • Ed James, KA8JMW, was appointed Rocky Mountain Division Vice Director.
  • Bench idea: run a small local AI model offline on a Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB) with llama.cpp or Ollama.

Your turn

Caught the Buzzer, spotted a black triangle, or just want to say hello? Send a listener report. Have a bump-in-the-night story or a radio topic of your own? Record it for Listener Voices. Want an extended conversation on the show? Apply to be a guest. The show has no sponsors, so if you enjoy it, you can support it directly.

Keep your antennas high, your lights on and your doors locked. 73.

Sources and links

Tool, Not a Voice — and the Band Above the Clouds

Companion notes for the August 8, 2026 broadcast — coffee-shop meetup energy, robots with manners, and a five-dollar door sensor that thinks it is a radio.

UNESCO put five words on World Radio Day this year that sound like they were written for a ham-club argument: AI is a tool, not a voice. Spain’s digital federation put AO1WRD through AO9WRD on the air around that idea — human operators, real QSOs, special QSLs. Meanwhile experimenters have pointed chatbots at microphones. Tonight we argue about which is which, then climb to ten gigahertz where “line of sight” meets rain, airplanes, and Amazon motion sensors.

News Radar

Sources: ARRL Letter August 6, 2026; Amateur Radio Newsline report 2545.

  • Voice-controlled CubeSat over Oslo — NRRL amateurs on 23 cm commanded OPS-SAT PRETTY; the bird ran Doom on board and returned images as proof.
  • First ARISS school contact with Kenya.
  • FCC Notice of Violation for a Georgia GMRS licensee running ~two dozen internet-linked repeaters (linking user traffic that way is an amateur-service thing, not GMRS as cited).
  • Amazon exploring satellite-to-smartphone / LEO phone service.
  • Wisconsin ARES (Green Bay Mike and Key) on tornado damage assessment near Appleton.
  • America250 WAS certificates orderable via LoTW; W1AW portables next window include Idaho, Ohio, Massachusetts.
  • Calendar: HamXposition (Marlborough) Aug 13–16; Cincinnati Aug 15; Huntsville National Convention Aug 21–23. Solar soft — flux ~105–110.
  • Also: new Maine SM Cory Golob, KU1U; ten-year-old YL CQ DX Marathon champ; Tokelau DXpedition access; Cats & Dogs specials still on HF; lighthouse season.

AI: tool, not a voice

AO#WRD (FEDI-EA) — Spanish special event stations for World Radio Day 2026, themed to UNESCO’s slogan. Humans on the mic. The point of the activation was values, not a robot DXCC.

TALOS / OE1XTU (Gerald Artner, OE1GAQ; TU Wien club) — published AI SSB pipeline: speech-to-text → language model → text-to-speech → PTT via CAT. Contest tests under human supervision of frequency and power; QEX writeup. Latency, QRM, and glitches still real. Useful foil for the slogan.

The argument: experimentation vs. control-operator rules; is a chatbot QSO a contact with a place or a server farm; awards and logs; autonomous contest search-and-pounce bots now public; ARRL treating contest AI as assisted/unlimited territory while rules catch up.

Host stance from the show: ML noise reduction, logging help, study tutors — fine. An unsupervised voice working strangers while you shop — different animal. Tool, not a voice. Experiment with eyes open and truthful logs; do not farm LoTW to a bot. Part 97 (and equivalents) still expect a licensed control operator.

Microwave: not just line of sight

  • Rain scatter — storm cells as temporary mirrors at ~3 cm / 10 GHz
  • Aircraft scatter — airframes as sky furniture for weak paths
  • License-manual “line of sight” is incomplete once weather and aviation join the path

Cheap first station: HB100-class modules

Doppler motion-sensor boards (HB100 and clones) from Amazon/eBay — ~10 GHz DRO, patch antennas, a few dollars. Hams retune toward the 10.368 GHz amateur segment (many US boards ship near 10.525). Wideband FM / beacon experiments; surplus sat-TV LNB + dish on receive; QEX-era signal-source hacks.

  1. Two modules if you can; ~5 V clean supply — do not feed 12 V
  2. Measure after tuning (analyzer, microwave-capable SDR, or a mentor) — do not tune blind
  3. Plastic box; patches for desk tests; horn/dish when you mean it
  4. First goals: across the room, parking lot, then town — wideband and forgiving
  5. Limits: DRO drift, not a narrowband DX radio; it transmits — treat it like RF, not a toy camera; don’t stare into the patches
  6. Find local 10 GHz / 5.7 GHz people before you invent every mistake alone

Soft sun, Perseids, leave the house

With flux sleepy, higher HF sulks while 40/30/80 still pay. Listen with RF gain discipline; respect clocks and gray line; trust beacons. Perseids peak ~Aug 12–14 — MSK144 and friends on 6 m / 2 m; dawn often kinder. When the shack is the noise source, pack a tote (battery radio, wire, headphones, throw line) and go somewhere quieter. Public-park manners apply.

Next week and links

Next week: AGC — the circuit that turns your radio into a well-meaning liar when you swear the band is dead.

Argue about the robots on the way to the car. Solder something before the week is out. This is Echos in the Ether.

Birds, Benches, and Band Plans

This week’s program is pure amateur radio: Field Day prep, working the satellites, and the new wave of local AI showing up on the bench. A companion to the broadcast, with the dates, frequencies, and links you can verify yourself.

Field Day is next weekend

ARRL Field Day 2026 runs June 27 and 28, 1800 UTC Saturday through 2059 UTC Sunday, the same fourth-weekend-of-June ritual the hobby has kept since 1933. This year’s theme is “Amateur Radio, A National Resource,” paired with the Year of the Club push. Treat it as antenna practice, logging practice, emergency-power practice, and the social glue that keeps clubs alive, not just a score. New to it? Use the ARRL Field Day site locator to find a club near you. Been doing it forever? Mentor someone who looks nervous near the coax, and make sure your GOTA (Get On The Air) station is ready. Entries are due by the Tuesday, July 28 deadline.

One hard-won lesson from the show: demonstrate the whole chain before the public arrives, generator, transfer switch, and logging laptop included. Politics and newcomers both watch the chain, not just the radio.

Work a bird this week

The amateur satellites are not a side quest for people with acreage and giant rotators. More than ten transponders and repeaters are alive right now. AMSAT Field Day runs concurrent with ARRL Field Day (1800 UTC June 27 to 2100 UTC June 28) and counts by mode: one QSO per FM bird such as SO-50 (and ISS voice when active), and multiple SSB and CW contacts on linear transponders like AO-7, RS-44, AO-73, FO-29, and JO-97. Working at least one satellite during Field Day earns ARRL bonus points. Two new designations to add to your tracker: SO-127 (HADES-SA / SpinnyOne, carrying SSDV and CODEC 2) and FO-126 (OrigamiSat-2).

First-bird checklist for mortals: install a pass-prediction app, start with FM before linear, plan for Doppler (high on the uplink early in the pass, low on the downlink), practice with a handheld and a whip before blaming a rotator you do not own, listen to a full pass before you transmit, then call once, clearly, and log it like any other QSO. You do not need a tower farm.

Software heads-up: AMSAT is retiring classic Two Line Element distribution because the five-digit catalog numbers are running out. General Perturbations data (JSON, XML, KVN) is in beta now, with production migration expected July 2026. Test your tracking stack before Field Day, not during it. Also note that ARISS radios power down for a spacewalk from June 29 to July 1, so plan any ISS voice attempts around that window.

The AI bench, with the license intact

Artificial intelligence is finally useful on the radio side where it stays local, auditable, and subordinate to a licensed operator who can still explain what happened on frequency. Three projects worth a look: RFWhisper, fully local, open-source ML noise reduction (DeepFilterNet 3 with an RNNoise fallback in a GNU Radio, SoapySDR, and ONNX pipeline) that helps you tell a closed band from a noisy shack without streaming your audio to anyone; SmartSDR MCP, which lets an AI assistant control a FlexRadio through a strict propose, approve, transmit loop so the human stays legally responsible for every emission; and a FreeDV Reporter edge setup that summarizes DX opportunities with a local LLM and no cloud fees. The rule of the whole segment: local ears, approved transmit, human responsibility, club education.

Also on the calendar

  • ARRL Kids Day is today, June 20, 1800 to 2359 UTC. Slow down, use plain phonetics, celebrate the contact, skip the lecture unless they ask for it.
  • HAM RADIO Friedrichshafen, Europe’s largest amateur radio exhibition, June 26 to 28, meeting the ASTRO astronomy fair for the first time.
  • The 13 Colonies Special Event, July 1 to 7, a friendly on-ramp for newer operators chasing a clean sweep.
  • Solar weather is politely boring (low activity, C-class only), so conditions are not the excuse this week. Shack discipline and operating skill win.

Your seven-day challenge

Small and honest: write one Field Day purpose sentence tonight, listen to one complete satellite pass without transmitting, and label one unknown power brick in your go-kit. If Field Day weekend beats you to it, do all three anyway between setup and tear-down, then teach the method to someone in your club. Next week: a club-culture deep dive on turning “Year of the Club” talk into real membership, real training calendars, and a real public face.

Clear, clean, curious. This is Echos in the Ether.