(This story originally appeared in on Nov 22, 2016)

City’s radio hams have been left baffled by cryptic signals in a foreign language which are originating in the deep seas off the Arabian coast. They have written to central government agencies asking for an investigation.

HAM slam

Mumbai’s circuit of amateur radio operators — or hams as they are called — is being rudely interrupted by indecipherable signals originating in the high seas off the west coast, prompting the group to write to the union ministry of telecommunications and other central government agencies to probe the source of this suspect transmission.The blips, being picked up by the radio operators’ VHF wireless sets for five or so months now, became a cause for concern only after they were traced to about 100 nautical miles, or 185 kilometres, off the Maharashtra-Gujarat coastline.When the hams homed in on the origin point with their direction-finding equipment and antennae, they shot off urgent letters to the wireless advisor at the ministry, the Prime Minister’s Office and top defence officers apart from the police, alerting them to the disturbance.The spokesperson for the city-based group Ham Radio Operators, Ankur Puranik, told Mumbai Mirror that the irregular signals are encroaching on the 144-146MHz bandwidth allotted to their two-way radio transmission. About 70 of the city’s 200 hams have heard these fishy signals at various times of the day, but mostly at night.What makes it all disquieting is that the signal dispatchers do not use the mandatory call sign — a unique identifier for transmissions and broadcasting — by which each ham in the world can be identified and tracked, implying that they do not want their identity or location to be known. “And they speak in a language we don’t understand,” Puranik said.The operators surmise that the transmissions could be emanating from violent elements such as pirates or some such fringe group. But for all we know thus far, they could be coming from fishermen.“We believe they are using openband wireless sets which can tune into any frequency in the VHF band of 136-174 MHz. Some of these frequencies may be falling in the bands used by our government and security agencies,” Puranik said.If the unidentified operators are using high-power wireless sets in the range of 25-50 watts, their signals may be getting disseminated many hundreds of nautical miles to other Indian coastal areas or even neighbouring countries, he added.In their memo, the hams have requested the government to investigate dealers of marine radio equipment and verify radio licences of fishing vessels, in order to ascertain if the unknown operators have acquired their sets from illegal sources.They have also drawn the government’s attention to unauthorised sale of two-way radio sets on retail websites and other internet marketing outlets, which they said is very risky and poses a threat to national security. “Such sale also flouts the law,” Puranik said.“Walkie talkie sets and wireless base stations are being sold illegally with a cash-on-delivery facility by e-commerce sites like Amazon, Ebay, Snap Deal and Flipkart ,” the operators claimed.Ministry officials told Mirror that they are looking into the matter.» The most well-liked theory about the origin of the term ‘ham’ is that it is shorthand for the three radio pioneers: Heinrich Hertz, who helped develop the theory of electromagnetic waves; Edwin Howard Armstrong, who was successful in inventing FM; and Gugliemo Marconi, the first to transmit signals across the Atlantic.» Some speculate it is a backronym that stands for Help All Mankind, as reflected in times of emergency or calamity when ham radio is used for sending distress signals.» Others think it’s because in the earlier days of radio communication, government stepped in to conquer short-waves and allowed radio amateurs to operate only on certain frequencies, which were sandwiched as if in a ‘ham sandwich’.» Still others think it is short for hamfisted, implying amateur, an inference many find offensive since amateur radio is anything but amateurish.» But all these theories are widely contested, and there is no consensus on the etymology.