S-band mysteries

Let's call him Dave, and let's assume that he lives somewhere along the European Atlantic coast. What sounds quite dull and regular will soon send shivers down our spines, but let's go back a little.

The higher a frequency, the narrower the signal distribution, unless a friendly satellite transmits the signal from high above, thus extending its reach. The exchange of information between Dr. Dish and all global monitors has become a recurring ritual, because what can be received in Chile needn't necessarily appear on the screen in Scandinavia. The Sband has always fascinated Dr. Dish monitors - not only because the signal level meter goes crazy every time your neighbour heats their TV dinner in the microwave, but mainly because the S-band is being used to transmit the tracking data of almost all rocket launches. While Ariane 4 and Ariane 5 use 2206.0 GHz, Atlas Centaur rockets use 2210.5 GHz. Even the launches of the small Orbcomm satellites can be followed, you merely need to set your receiver to 2250.5 GHz. Orbcomm satellites are sent aloft on board a L-1011 aeroplane, then propelled to their final orbit using additional small rockets. Both the 1-1011 and the smaller rocket are equipped with a video link so that the satellite's journey through space can be checked from Earth - and by everybody in possession of an S-Band receiver. By the way, Orbcomm launches sometimes have even room to take parts of the ashes of deceased loved ones into space - in exchange for a nice sum of money, to be sure.

But let's get back to our story: we had nothing else in mind but hunting for a space shuttle and its tracking data. Every once in a while we came across video transmissions or various voice downlinks. Hunting for a shuttle one eye stays glued to the monitor displaying the current position of the spacecraft, while the other eye focuses on the TV screen trying to make out things amidst the dots and fish that fill the screen. Suddenly the frequency analyser indicates a strong signal nearby - has the frequency of the shuttle transmissions been changed? Ooops, it's only a police helicopter surveying the highway across the valley and transmitting its colour video to police headquarters. UFOs?

Suddenly Dave is on the Internet phone (not exactly first rate quality, but you can call around the world at the cost of a local call). Dave found something. He can't tell us the exact frequency though, because he - like so many others - uses the modified version of a simple video transmitter (sets you back some 200 dollars) and thus can only roughly guess the frequency. What he does know, however, is that on his screen he is clearly looking through the front window of a flying object. All the flight data are projected onto the windshield, similar to modern military aircraft. There is a mysterious touch to this story, though: the movements of the aircraft are such that a state of the art F1 6 would have burst or crashed had it even attempted such sudden changes of direction. A shuttle video, on the other hand, is out of the question. Dave mumbles something about UFOs, but we don't really take him too seriously because we all know that deep in his heart he believes in extraterrestrial life and everything else that fills whole episodes of the X-Files. Our own position is too far away to have a go at our down receiver, but we're trying nonetheless. At 2290 MHz there seems to be something and this something even seems to be moving (indicated by varying levels of signal strength), but that's about all we can guess. No problem, as Dave has already got his VCR rolling and is taping the whole mystery for us. All that's needed now is DHL to deliver the tape within 24 hours. We're still puzzled, and we believe the frequency we found could be right because it has been used before for all kinds of hypersonic tests.

That same evening Dave calls again to tell us that these strange movements with that strange aircraft have appeared again - this time in complete darkness. Unfortunately Dave hadn't got round to copying and mailing the tape, but that doesn't matter anymore since my own curiosity (mixed with the madness of any Dr. Dish monitor) got me in my car and on the road to the Atlantic coast. Night-time makes for fast driving and it doesn't take long before the lights of Dave's shack appear in front of my car. Freshly brewed coffee first, and then on to the VCR. I really can make out the view out of a cockpit, even though the image keeps disappearing every time the craft is out of reach or flying very low. More coffee and a few hours into the new day we are once again shaken by images that seem to be shot out of a cockpit with the flight data projected onto the cockpit window. Altitude, speed and other information is clearly visible, but the layout is different from the night before. For a few minutes only the sea and clouds can be seen, but with the help of the projected compass we can easily determine that the aircraft is manoeuvred extremely swiftly and with many changes of speed and direction. We are by no means experts on military aircraft but we can safely state that what we see here is artistry, or - even better - a test flight of a new and hitherto unknown new aircraft. So we consult Jane's Handbook listing all military aircraft and partly also showing their cockpits, without any success whatsoever. There's still Dave's son, a lover of PC flight simulations but even here cannot find anything that's even remotely similar to what we've seen on our screen a few hours before. Meanwhile our aircraft on the screen has reached the coast (but which coast?) and is coming down quickly in order to land on an airstrip next to the sea. At this time the speed is still around 227 knots, but compared to what we've seen before that's almost standstill. After all a few moments earlier the aircraft was touching the sound barrier! During touch down the image disappears, but no more than twelve minutes later this mysterious thing is up in the sky again performing the same breathtaking manoeuvres as before, only at a much higher attitude. Around lunchtime the transmissions stop, and until night-time nothing appears on our screen. Then it's the whole performance all over again.

It's time for me to drive back home, even though I have to leave with an empty feeling suggesting that there must be something to Dave's discovery. We couldn't discover any relevant correspondence on the military air band, we were unable to identify the aircraft by way of comparison, we were in essence at a loss for explanations. We kept surveying that frequency and found out that roughly 90% of flights take place during night-time, and that all but one flights are performed by the same aircraft. What is the S-band used for? Who has access to the data? Is the data transmitted via satellite for further analysis? FleetSatCom would be a candidate for that, but what goes on those satellites still is a secret to us (although the system has its vulnarabilities, as reported in another article in this issue.)

Are the flights just plain training flights? Hardly so, because training flights usually appear in combination with voice communication we would have been able to eavesdrop on. Our final suggestion is that something brand-new is being evaluated here. That would also explain the predominance of night-time flights. The S-Band is very active and very revealing when it comes to traffic surveillance or microwave cooking in your neck of the woods, but that there are some secrets the S-band obviously likes to keep to itself. That's probably what creates all the excitement and the hype about the S-band.