The argument about Bigfoot tends to go one of two ways: either you’ve never looked at the evidence closely and think it’s obviously ridiculous, or you have looked at it and can’t quite explain certain things away. The serious researchers — and there are serious researchers — don’t claim certainty. They claim [...] Read more →
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When Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt walked into Rendlesham Forest in December 1980 with a team of airmen, he brought a radiation detector. This wasn’t theatrical — it was standard procedure for a military officer investigating an unknown object near a base that housed nuclear weapons. What his equipment found was elevated radiation [...] Read more →
Russian Officials examine camp site. On January 23, 1959, ten students and young graduates from the Ural Polytechnic Institute set out for a winter trek through Russia’s northern Ural Mountains. One turned back after a few days with joint pain. The other nine continued. Their leader was a 23-year-old engineering student [...] Read more →
Most people who want to run a serious sky-watch spend about forty-five minutes planning the observation setup and then three hours sitting in an uncomfortable chair getting cold. The uncomfortable chair problem is actually important — if you’re miserable by midnight you’ll pack up before anything happens, and the most interesting things at [...] Read more →
Author’s Note ON APRIL 27, 1949, the U.S. Air Force stated: “The mere existence of some yet unidentified flying objects necessitates a constant vigilance on the part of Project ‘Saucer’ personnel, and on the part of the civilian population. “Answers have been—and will be—drawn from such factors as [...] Read more →
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Roughly 44,000 kilograms of meteoritic material falls on Earth every day. Most of it lands in the ocean or burns up entirely on the way down, but a meaningful fraction reaches the surface intact, and some of that ends up in fields, deserts, dry lake beds, and beaches where a metal detector [...] Read more →
SDR Radio for Beginners: How to Listen for Anomalous Signals A $25 USB dongle has turned an entire generation of hobbyists into radio operators without licenses, technical training, or any hardware beyond a laptop. That’s not an exaggeration — the RTL-SDR dongle, originally designed as a cheap television receiver for [...] Read more →
In December 1980, US Air Force personnel encountered an unknown craft in a Suffolk forest over three nights. The deputy base commander recorded it in real time. The tape is public domain. In the early hours of December 26, 1980, a security patrol at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England reported [...] Read more →
Edward James Ruppelt – St. Louis Post-DispatchPhoto published on Mar 08, 1953 From 1952 to 1969, the United States Air Force ran the longest official UFO investigation in American history out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. They called it Project Blue Book, and by the time they shut it [...] Read more →
Geiger counters have long been used in the recovery of exotic materials that may contain radioactive particles. From detecting meteorites to space debris the instruments have held their place in modern history since the dawn of the atomic age. In 1979 the instruments played a significant role in the recovery [...] Read more →
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SDR Radio for Beginners: How to Listen for Anomalous Signals 
SDR Radio for Beginners: How to Listen for Anomalous Signals
A $25 USB dongle has turned an entire generation of hobbyists into radio operators without licenses, technical training, or any hardware beyond a laptop. That’s not an exaggeration — the RTL-SDR dongle, originally designed as a cheap television receiver for European digital broadcasts, was reverse-engineered by hobbyists around 2010 when someone realized the chip inside could output raw radio signal data directly to a computer. Software developers at the Osmocom project wrote drivers that unlocked it, and suddenly a device that was manufactured to receive TV was listening to aircraft transponders, weather satellites, and the International Space Station.
The RTL-SDR receiver covers roughly 24 MHz to 1766 MHz. That range includes FM radio, aircraft ADS-B position broadcasts, emergency services in some areas, satellite downlinks, and a wide swath of spectrum that most people never think about. Purpose-built RTL-SDR units with better shielding and frequency stability sell for around $30 in 2025. The HackRF One, which can both receive and transmit and covers 1 MHz to 6 GHz, runs about $300 and is what serious investigators use for more demanding work.
The software is free. SDR# (pronounced SDR-sharp) is the most beginner-friendly option on Windows. CubicSDR runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. SDR Console is more feature-rich and handles multiple receivers simultaneously. All of them show you the same basic view: a spectrum display showing signal strength across a range of frequencies, and a waterfall diagram that scrolls continuously showing the history of what’s been received. Signals appear as peaks in the spectrum and colored streaks in the waterfall. Learning to read those displays takes about an afternoon.
For investigation purposes the interesting capabilities are mostly passive. You can monitor specific frequency ranges for unusual activity and record everything for later analysis. You can use ADS-B decoding software to build a real-time map of every aircraft broadcasting position data in your area — useful for ruling out conventional aircraft during a sky-watch. You can watch for signals that appear and disappear at unusual intervals or on frequencies that shouldn’t have activity.
What you can’t easily do without training is interpret anomalous signals on the fly. What you can do is record them. A recorded IQ file of your observation session captures everything the antenna received. You can upload audio recordings to AI tools and ask for analysis of signal patterns. You don’t need to be an electrical engineer to collect good data — you just need to be organized and consistent about what you’re capturing and when.
One thing worth understanding before you start: receiving radio signals is legal. Transmitting on most frequencies without an FCC license is not. SDR receivers like the RTL-SDR are receive-only. The HackRF can transmit, which is why it requires responsible use. For investigation purposes, receive-only is everything you need.
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