Well an interesting time has been had by all in the past week.

A Radio Amateur in Northern California, inadvertently pushed a keyboard up to his keyer, which produced a stream of dots at 25 WPM for well over a week.

An international effort from Region 3 bringing in Region 1 via the Intruderwatch and various posts to DX Clusters and Yahoo groups eventually resulted in the Radio Amateur being contacted via the ARRL in the USA.

Signal reports were received from Europe, USA, Afica and Australia and New Zealand (who heard it first and raised the alarm).

The resultant HF DF hunt resulted in a solid triangulation on the USA states from Radio Amateurs from all over the world.

Finally, we can only imagine a slightly embarrassed Radio Amateur within the US was contacted and the stream nicknamed “Dotty” ceased yesterday.

Excellent collaboration throughout the Intruderwatch organisations across Europe, USA and New Zealand, which could only have occurred with the support of the Radio Amateurs who participated in the hunt, providing signal and reports.    For a week the 18085.5 signal was an excellent HF beacon for propagation.

Another exciting tale from the NZART Monitoring Service – who says monitoring is boring?

John ZL1GWE