In this week's installment of Surfin' about long-delayed echoes (LDEs), Whitey Doherty, K1VV, recalled "hearing about an LDE incident many years ago, must be at least 40 years ago, when TV channels went off the air at midnight. Someone said a program showed up on the screen, a snowy picture, but it was a broadcast from six years previously. It lasted several minutes. Can’t recall where or exactly when I heard that or read it.”
Today, Ric Wayman, K7DLX, e-mailed me that this story is an urban legend and, in fact, an LDE hoax. You can read all about it at the Urban Legends Reference Pages web site.
Here's something that I have kept hidden for many years, because I thought folks would think I am stranger than I am.
ReplyDeleteBack in '57 or '58 I was CQing on 15 CW. No break-in then, just transmit switch, antenna switch, receiver switch. Then I heard someone sending CQ and signing my call. It sure sounded like me!
I was taken aback, to say the least. I never heard it again.
Until LDEs were mentioned in the literature, I thought someone was playing a prank, or I had contacted little green men. Either way, I quit for the day.
I don't know what my T/R time was, nor did I measure the time of the echo. I would to tend to think the T/R time far exceeded 1/7 or 1/3 second. Things were a lot slower then.
So every time that I read about an LDE report, I never think it is a hoax.
Jim, W1EQO