I was hiking up to Bald Mtn and it was cold and cell signal was weak, so to conserve my phone battery, I put it in airplane mode. When I got to the summit, before I set anything up, I wanted to check to see if I would be able to spot. I pulled out my cell phone and turned it on - it immediately started playing a CW signal?!? I had no signal & no apps running (I’m not even sure I have an app that would do that if I wanted it), and this has never happened before! Unfortunately, I don’t know CW yet – so I don’t know what it was saying.
I’m wondering what could’ve caused this?
All I can think is it was a Silent Key ghost welcoming me to the summit. Unless someone has a better explanation - I’m sticking with that.
all lot of phones say sms (… — …)in morse code as a ring tone when a txt comes through, you may have heard that. But your explanation sounds much better.
Mike
Very good story Jill. I like it and I think you’ve got the message the ghost was trying to send you: “you have to learn CW”
This story gives me the chance to tell you about the morse my smartphone does.
Some years ago I loaded into my phone different morse words.
Whenever I receive a call on my smartphone, I hear CQ CQ CQ, except for some particular numbers to which I associated other different messages.
I have a specific one saying XYL
Others saying FAMILY
Others saying each of my siblings names, my mother.
I also have some of my customer names
As soon as my phone rings, I know who’s calling and I know if I have to answer right away or not…
Cheers,
I loaded Rucksack Radio Tool on to my Android phone for the EU <> NA event. I know that data service is pretty patchy in the Yorkshire dales, so I wanted to make use of the text spotting service. I have used RRT before but it was a while ago.
I was a bit shocked when CW started coming out of my phone, eventually I worked out that it was announcing new SOTAwatch spots!
All Interesting hypotheses, the engineer in me can’t help pointing out that I’ve had the phone for 3 years and 115 summits and haven’t added any apps or changed settings in months - and this is never happened before.
Being deep in the woods, there was a magical feeling when it happened. Ghost or software glitch - it gave me that feeling you get as a child filled with wonder. I’m closing in on retirement, so I like to hold on to those moments when they happen.
For a while, in the same situation the ringtone was “Present arms” (bugle…) !
Today it play “XYL” in cw. Much more soft and it helps in collision avoidance…
Great Story !! I’ve been copying code since 1957… Drives my XYL crazy, when somebody “honks” a car horn -.-. I yell that’s a “C”… and that’s my story and —I’m stickin to it… 73 ted/w6vxp
