Synthesized voice announcements on ATC tmtrs?

[Minus1]

Does anyone else keep hearing weird synthesized voice announcements on ATC transmitters?

These seem to happen occasionally when the transmitter is not being used, but I cannot understand what is being said.

There seems to be a female voice first, then a male voice. And the tone of each is as if a question is being asked.

I'm not even sure they are 'speaking' English, it sounds Chinese!

[Glamdring]

Nothing that I'm aware of like that. Possibly engineering test? Can you post a recording?

[thelad]

nope not in leeds.

[liamcarbin]

I too am hearing this here in stoke, on one of the Mil Freqs, 278.6

Some man going 1,2,3,4,5 5,4,3,2,1
he has done it several times now, he is also stating the freq before he does the count.
How odd

[Minus1]

I haven't managed to get a recording yet as they seem to happen at random and only occasionally. They don't last long enough for me to hit 'Record' !

One came up on 278.6 (London Mil SW ICF) at about 22:10. I think I managed to discern the word "hello" spoken by the male voice, the rest was incomprehensible. About 6 minutes later there was a "Swanwick engineer" testing using his own voice for several minutes (I think this was what liamcarbin heard).

Earlier today one happened on 127.45 (London MIl NW VHF). There was no engineer follow up(?) to that as far as I know.

I'm going to start logging freqs and times and see if there is a pattern.

[liamcarbin]

Not heard it for a while now.

Must be doing some upgrades/repairs.

Just happened again on the same freq at 22.50BST & 22.55 & 23.00

Every 5 minutes at the moment. Maybe its something to do with upgrades for the Olympics?

[Beefi]

Hows this for an answer:- Most Transmitter sites contain TX/filtering equipment only and are linked to control by a land line or RF link. If you loose the line or link how do you know? It is possible that in the TX equipment rack there is a default voice recording that keys the TX and speaks a message - could be code or ID or similar. So if there are line or link upgrades and it disappears maybe thats what you are hearing. In the old days control was a box with buttons a microphone and speaker. Today it could be networked and certainly would be from a computer screen, and its entirely possible to sit with a laptop in your front room and do it all from there!

[Minus1]

Going off on 128.25 intermittently at the moment. Still incomprehensible. Might even be Chinese or something, although the word "hello" is included midway.

The best I can transcribe it is thus:

FEMALE VOICE:
Da cease
Alsoj no we
Elunge da cease
Jadwordy note

MALE VOICE:
Loland tre o tre so
Hello
Overflowing no jo
One jo num


Da cease might be 'desist'
Loland might be 'lowland'
tre o tre might be 303
'Overflowing' really does sound like that word.

If it is supposed to be a useful announcement why do they make it so incomprehensible????