The longest EAM ever, according to people who would know, is much longer. It is at least 515 characters. This one was "only" 270.
While it is plausible that a fair number of US military assets required new instructions regarding the security of US diplomatic personnel overseas, any such connection would be sheer speculation. There is no evidence connecting these special multi-block EAMs with anything extraordinary at all. We'll probably never know.
Utility Planet is the official blog for the column of the same name in The Spectrum Monitor. It replaces Utility World in the discontinued Monitoring Times magazine. Utilities are all VLF/LF/MF/HF (and sometimes low-band VHF) radio communications except broadcasting, CB, and non-emergency amateur. If you understood the last sentence, you know enough to read this blog.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Longest USAF EAM Ever?
EAM stands for Emergency Action Message. They aren't really only for dire national emergencies like nuclear war or terrorism, though they are definitely another way the command structure of the US military would get essential orders out in either of these.
It used to be thought in the more conspiratorially minded parts of the Internet that very long ones would mean a lot of orders going out at once, and indicate that something very large is up. This has not been shown as the case. The really long ones come in sections, and in the past they've been related to exercises or unknown situations.
With this, let's note that tonight they sent just possibly the longest one ever. It was 270 characters long. (Normal is around 35.) It took the poor operator at Andrews HF-GCS 23 minutes to get through the required two broadcasts. He barely made it. You could hear him trying to catch his breath.
The loudest frequency heard in California was 6739 kHz USB. The broadcast was parallel on other HFGCS channels. The ones heard here were 8992 and 11175.
Here is the (offline encrypted) text of the EAM Note the sections delimited by 4 repetitions of a letter, which is typical of this particular extended message type:
It used to be thought in the more conspiratorially minded parts of the Internet that very long ones would mean a lot of orders going out at once, and indicate that something very large is up. This has not been shown as the case. The really long ones come in sections, and in the past they've been related to exercises or unknown situations.
With this, let's note that tonight they sent just possibly the longest one ever. It was 270 characters long. (Normal is around 35.) It took the poor operator at Andrews HF-GCS 23 minutes to get through the required two broadcasts. He barely made it. You could hear him trying to catch his breath.
The loudest frequency heard in California was 6739 kHz USB. The broadcast was parallel on other HFGCS channels. The ones heard here were 8992 and 11175.
Here is the (offline encrypted) text of the EAM Note the sections delimited by 4 repetitions of a letter, which is typical of this particular extended message type:
VXNN7UBAZ5HDGTF2YZLLVJWO QVURW4KHSX3PW7O5ASOCUS7DVJPYRANKR5GGVTVTAXOANKKEEEEBPC5F3ZCACCCX2OX22Y HHHH4XOIIWRBP2WHIPZIIPK CCCC7NBNVFAA5F3YCMLLXEN QQQQ4VFCBEXHQIZORDIZNHPHMU3425PMZKPCFSS2LIJEDKTJ AAAA3P5RJTQ77UD2I46VS4D CCCCBUYNM4LJO3LNM3FVMUY JJJJ3HXRRHWVJWWEBDYYDYG HHHHJDIB2DL6UM