Also, there's a strong element (methinks) of us hearing what we expect or want to hear. Extra easy to listen for a pattern if you know it in advance. (Compulso

Also, there's a strong element (methinks) of us hearing what we expect or want to hear. Extra easy to listen for a pattern if you know it in advance. (Compulsory anecdote - when studying, I was member of a ham radio club which dabbled with just about anything tangentially related to electronics. And, being students, we did so while consuming lots of beer) Anyway - we did get a thrill from scoring firsts - say, being the first Norwegian hams to successfully log contact with another country on a given frequency band / mode. One evening one of our members was positive he heard an Australian beacon transmitting in the 160M (just above broadcast AM) band - a band suffering from epic amounts of atmospheric and man-made noise. Still, he was adamant he could repeatedly copy the beacon's morse code callsign - buried in the noise, sure - BUT IT WAS THERE!!! Luckily, a couple of other members looked into it before he filed the claim; that particular beacon had been offline for the better part of a year at the time he heard it...)