Welcome to Free World Blues. In this recording, I’ll be investigating incidents of “meowing” and other animal-noise broadcasts on the International Aeronautical Distress Frequency, and using open-source data to track down the meowlefactors.
I. The International Aeronautical Emergency Frequency:
First, a bit of background on what’s happening: Back in 1886 – that is, 140 years ago as of the date of this recording – Heinrich Rudolf Hertz demonstrated the use of radio waves for communication at a distance. It quickly became clear that emergency communications were an excellent use case for this then-new technology. The first emergency transponders were morse code beacons carried by ships and hot air ballons starting in 1901; there were no transponders aboard “aircraft” in the modern sense at the time, because heavier-than-air flying machines were yet to be invented. However, after the Wright Brother’s first flight in 1903, these beacons were quickly adapted to powered, heavier-than-air craft. This is one of many examples of how aviation takes after seafaring: both ships and aircraft have “pilots” who control lateral motion with “rudders”; ships transit between “ports” while aircraft use “airports”; etc. From the standpoint of emergency preparadness and response, there are also similarities: both seacraft and aircraft have a tendency to become lost while operating far from Civilization; both maritime navigation and flight can be endangered by poor weather, and especially by poor visibility; both types of vehicles can find themselves in emergencies due to fuel exhaustion; and airplane-airplane collisions and ship-ship collisions are a major cause of fatalaties in both cases. The fact that aircraft and ships are both closed environments also means that they are subject to hijacking, and that onboard fires pose extreme hazards. Aircraft and ships require great expertise to operate safely, making pilot incapacitation similarly concerning. One could even say that “running aground” is the nautical equivalent of “controlled flight into terrain” (indeed, the Titanic was sunk by “controlled sailing into an iceberg”). Since both types of vehicles are typically quite valuable, both in a financial and strategic sense, they are of great interest to military planners, and significant loss of life has occured when civilian aircraft and seacraft have been attacked, either accidentally or intentionally; compare the 1917 sinking of RMS Lusitania with the 2014 shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
One legacy of this complex relationship between maritime and air operations is that aircraft have “inherited” the seafaring practice of using certain radio frequencies for emergency communication. I won’t be discussing every emergency frequency used by every plane and glider and hot-air balloon and ship and boat and submarine and hovercraft in every country over the century-and-a-half during which this practice has been commonplace, but the frequency 121.5 Megahertz, in the VHF band, or Very High Frequency band, is currently the international standard as a “least common denominator” for both aerospace and nautical distress calls. Some might even say that 121.5 is the “Intenational…AERO-NAUTICAL…distress frequency”, and I’m among the some whom’st would say that, because its true. Numerous other emergency frequencies are used, including harmonics of 121.5 MHz (such as 243 MHz), and there is an effort to separate nautical from maritime emergency frequencies, as well as to develop specific frequencies for military distress calls and for locator beacons. Radio technology has greatly evolved over the past 140 years, and there is no such thing as a “perfect” emergency frequency: lower frequencies tend to have longer range, reflect better off terrain and the ionosphere, and are attenuated less by conductive materials – this last point is an important consideration for sending distress calls through water (such as from a submarine) or through snow (such as from a rescue beacon carried by an unlucky heliskier who has been buried under an avalanche). Shorter frequencies provide better audio quality (and can transmit data at higher bandwidth generally), can be broadcast and recieved with smaller antennæ, and can be located more precisely, but require more expensive electronics for their transmitters and receivers. Combine these considerations with the need to account for existing radio technology (and upgrade costs), current spectrum use, interference from man-made and natural sources, and the need to coordinate among 195 countries, and you can see why the situation is complicated. That said, I will mainly focus on 121.5 MHz in this recording. Note that, in aeronautical contexts, this frequency is often read as “one-twenty-one-DECIMAL-five”. In the United States, pilots typically refer to this frequency as “guard”, for two reasons: First, it is reserved, or “guarded”, for emergency use, i.e., it other uses are prohibited. Second, under most circumstances, pilots of commercial aircraft are legally required to keep at least one radio tuned to 121.5 unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise. Of course, if an electrical fault develops in a pilot’s radio and smoke starts pouring out of it, he is perfectly justified in pulling the associated circuit breaker, but aside from these rare situations, failure to listen on 121.5 isn’t merely a mistake – it’s a crime. Thus, it’s customary to keep a radio tuned to 121.5 and “guard” the frequency settings – “don’t touch that dial”, one could say.
If you are using Russian or Soviet radio equiptment, be aware that, because the Russian words for million (миллон) and billion (миллард) both start with the same letter, Russians will sometimes repeat the letter “к” (their abbreviation for кило, the Greek loanword for “thousand”) or “т” (the first letter of Russian word for тысячь, meaning “thousand”) in order to indicate multiples of one thousand. This usage denotes implied multiplication. For example, just as “a = xy” implies “A equals X times Y”, a Russian might write:
6к рублей / 6т рублей, meaning “Шесть тысяч Рублей”, or in English “six thousand Roubles”.
6кк рублей / 6тт рублей, literally meaning “Шесть тысяч-тысяч Рублей”, or in English “six thousand-thousand Roubles”. Of course, the more figurative meaning is “Шесть миллонов Рублей”, or in English “six million Roubles”
6ккк рублей / 6ттт рублей, literally meaning “Шесть тысяч-тысяч-тысяч Рублей”, or in English “six thousand-thousand-thousand Roubles”. Again, the more figurative meaning is “Шесть миллардов Рублей”, or in English “six billion Roubles”
Rather than repeating a “thousands” indicator (either the к or the т), Russians will also use Roman numerals after a single “к” or “т” to indicate how many equivalent repeats there are; one can think of raising 10 to the power of 3, and then raising the result to the power of the Roman numeral. For example, “six quadrillion” might be written as:
6 кⅤ
ot
6 тⅤ
Both Americans and Russians perfer Vedic (often incorrectly called “Arabic”) numerals to Roman numerals – That alone isn’t surprising, because the Vedic number system is objectively far superior. However, the preference is even stronger among Russians than Americans in my experience, and so encountering Roman numerals in Russia is quite rare – if you do, my recommendation is to see if they are being used to exponentiate a “к” or “т”.
Finally, Russians also use the period as a thousands-place separator and the comma as a decimal point; this is the opposite of the American convention. Therefore, one might see “121.5 MHz” written as:
121,5 МГц
or
121,5 kkГц
or
121,5 ттГц
or
121,5 kⅡГц
or
121,5 тⅡГц
Hopefully, this information will save you time and the stress of confusion when dealing with Slavic radio gear.
II. The Meowenings:
On January 19th, 2001, director Jayanth Jambulingam Chandrasekhar released his film Super Troopers; he also cast himself in a lead role as Lieutenant Arcot “Thorny” Ramathorn. I won’t describe the film in detail – it’s quite good, so if you haven’t seen it, do so. By far the most famous scene in Super Troopers is one in which a pair of “buddy cops” break up the monotony of small-town law enforcement by holding a competition to see whom can “meow” the most times at a detained motorist; I’ll show a portion of the clip now, in the unlikely event that you haven’t seen it.
[film clip]
Right. Ever since this film came out, meowing in public – or, at least, in circumstances where human meowing is not socially normal – has become a common game, where participants compete to see whom’st can meow the most, or loudest, etc. In many respects this is similar to the schoolyard “penis game”, in which the first player says the word “penis” at a certain volume, then the next has to say it louder, and the next still-louder, and so-on. This game can of course be played with other words, even gamer words, and there are Russian equivalents, and, I assume, equivalents for every language and culture. A hundred and seventy thousand years ago, I’m sure some stone-age man rolled his eyes at a gaggle of ten-year-olds who were shouting rude words outside his cave. It was probably the same cave-boomer who was listening to the youngers beating mammoth-skin drums around the campfire the night before, and muttered “You call this music? Back in my time, we had real music. Kids are getting so lazy these days…instead of using their brains, they’re spending all their time on the abacus, and smexting (that’s sexting with smoke signals).”. While meowing is often socially unacceptable for humans, it’s rarely explicitly prohibited. However, meowing on 121.5 MHz is strictly illegal worldwide, because doing so causes radio congestion that could block legitimate emergency communications. Many radio systems used by first responsers interpret any transmission on 121.5 as a distress call (which is reasonable, since the frequency is not supposed to be used for other purposes), and hence, these nuisance transmissions waste the time of emergency personnel and can encourage pilots and others to turn off their Guard radios, which presents further hazards. Overall, it’s just like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” from Æsop’s Fables, in which frequent false alarms increase the risk that a real alarm will be ignored. The Boy Who Cried Wolf – The Pilot Who Radioed ‘Meow’. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Regardless of the hazards involved, shortly after Super Troopers came out in early 2001, certain pilots becan meowing on the emergency aeronautical frequency. This is a primarily American phenomenon, and its worldwide spread has been limited by two major factors. First, much of the comedy in Super Troopers really only makes sense if you have a deep cultural understanding of the United States, and as a result, the film isn’t very popular abroad, even in Anglophone countries like Britain, India, British India, and Indian Britain. Second, meowings are mainly carried out by junior American pilots who fly regional and domestic routes. American Flight crew with the seniority to make long-haul international flights usually aren’t going to be meowing on 121.5 MHz. As a result, we haven’t seen much in the way of an international hiss-kreig, and this specific type of radio misuse has the form of a Civil Purr, with conflicts between meowing pilots and annoyed air traffic controllers primarily contained within the boundaries of the United States. Interestingly, the vast majority of documented meowings have occured on the Eastern Seaboard and in New England – these are the regions that include the state of Vermont, which is the setting of Super Troopers. This pattern holds for what is, as of the date of this recording, the most recent and highest-profile meowing. It took place on April 12th, 2026, at Ronald Regan International Airport in the District of Columbia, at approximately 15:00 Eastern Standard Time (approximately 10:00 GMT). Let’s give it a listen:
Now, to be fur, there have been some international cat-noise cases documented, especially related to military brinkmanship, so I don’t want to give the false impression that this is purely a domeowstic phenonemon. On May 20th, 2015, a United States Navy pilot was flying a Boeing P-8A Poseidon aircraft near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, when he observed a Chinese aircraft carrier and dove down to take a closer look. Given that the P-8A is primarily an anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare platform, and given that it was visibly loaded with torpedos at the time, this manuver caused alarm among the Chinese sailors, unsurprisingly. The People’s Liberation Navy radio operator keyed 121-decimal-5 and told the American pilot to go fly somewhere else, and when the pilot refused, the PLN operator meowed at him. Here is the exchange:
I have to give it to this Chinese sailor: that is an excellent meow. By far the best I’ve heard. I’ve neither uttered nor heard such a realistic meow in my life, not before this incident, and not since. If I needed a man to meow, he’d be my first choice.
III. The Long Paw Of The Law:
Back on the home front, both the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and FCC (Federal Communications Comission) are investigating the meowing at Ronald Regan International Airport. I’ve heard some speculation that these regulators may have already identified the culprits, but I think that’s unlikely: while there’s something to be said for holding one’s tongue during an ongoing investigation, the chief concern of “the police” and regulatory bodies which serve similar functions is to avoid appearing incompetent. If some entity whose job it is to solve crimes isn’t making much progress in doing so, citizens are going to start complaining, politicians are going to start cutting budgets and firing directors and hauling personnel in front of Congress for inquiries, criminals are going to be emboldened, etc., so if law enforcement doesn’t share updates, that’s usually because they don’t have any updates to share.
I am not a veteranarian, and so I will not be giving legal advice – nor will I attempt to explain all the crimes one might be committing by meowing on the International Aeronautical Emergency Frequency. However, I’ll briefly note that, in the United States, this sort of behavior is prohibited by Code of Federal Regulations (or “CFR”), Section 87, Part 173, Article K, which states, in part, that:
“The frequencies 121.5 MHz and 243.0 MHz are emergency and distress frequences available for use by survival craft stations, emergency locator transmitters, and equipment used for survival purposes. Use of 121.5 MHz and 243.0 MHz shall be limited to transmission of signals and communications for survival purposes.”
Specific penalties are laid out in CFR 87 part 187 and in FCC Enforcement Advisory 17 mark seven-four-seven (heh, seven-forty-seven), which states, in part, that:
https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0808/DA-17-747A1.pdf
“Interference to an aviation distress and safety frequency, including 121.500 MHz, is a violation of the
most critical nature, with the potential to obscure genuine distress transmissions. The Enforcement
Bureau intends to aggressively enforce the FCC’s aviation radio communications rules.
Violators may be subject to the penalties authorized by the Communications Act, including, but not
limited to, substantial monetary fines (up to $19,246 per single violation and up to $144,344 for an
ongoing violation), an in rem action to seize the offending radio equipment, and criminal sanctions.”
Note that in rem actions are effectively a form of civil forfeiture, in which the government literally names your radio transmitter (in this case) as a defendent and then “imprisions” it by confiscating it from you – quite an odd legal manuver, but we won’t dive deeper into this at the moment. It’s worth noting that this FCC Enforcement Advisory was issued in 2017, nearly a decade ago, which illustrates how long-standing the issue is.
Within the European Union, regulations are pursuant to ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) bylaws, specifically those in Annex 10, Volume V, §ection 4.1.3.1.1, which states that 121.5 MHz “shall be used only for genuine emergency purposes”. These guidelines are incorporated into EU law by EuroCONTROL, the European Association for the Safety of Air Navigation and Logistics – damn, now that’s a contrived acronym if I ever saw one. American acronyms are by far the most cringe, because Americans feel the need to come up with “cool-sounding” (and, usually, intimidating) names for everything. The problem is that supposedly cool-sounding acronyms end up sounding silly, and acronyms that were created to sound intimidating end up sounding even sillier. In the United States Armed Forces, if you spot an enemy position, you might radio your designated FISTER (Fire Support Team Enlisted Responder) and call in a strike with VAMPIRE (Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaisance Rocket Equipment). These high-tech weapons are an American military secret, protected by the DISCO (Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office). Combined arms warfare: that’s the kind of coordination that you learn at MANCOC (Maneuver Advanced Non-Commissioned Officer Course). The cringe comes easily to us Americans, but the Europeans force their acronyms. In any case, European incidents regarding improper chatter on 121-decimal-5 rarely involve meowing; the most common violations involve discussions of sports, especially soccer (or “football” in the Angloid dialect), and this is especially a problem during important matches:
https://skybrary.aero/articles/misuse-international-aeronautical-emergency-frequency-1215-mhz
In terms of punishments for improper use of 121-decimal-5 and other radio frequencies critical, IN GENERAL, there are three tiers that I’ve seen:
1. Accidental misuse;
2. Intentional misuse, without malicious intent beyond radio tresspass itself;
3. Intentional misuse, with further malicious intent.
Cases of accidental misuse happen all the time, and are by far the most common case. Most often, pilots broadcast on 121.5 MHz when they intend to broadcast on a tower control frequency (often this relates to takeoff or landing clearances), or to communicate with another aircraft, to discuss en-route weather with dedicated weather monitoring stations. Since commercial aircraft usually operate with one radio tuned to 121.5 and another tuned to an air traffic control frequency, it’s easy to hit “transmit” on the wrong radio, especially because pilots often switch seats during long flights (switching between the pilot-monitoring and pilot-flying roles). Radios are usually located between the left and right seats, so if a flight crew decides that the left-hand radio will be tuned to ATC and the right-hand radio to the emergency frequency, a pilot sitting in the left seat will get used to the radio nearest to his body being the radio for non-emergency use, and if he switches to the right seat, he may not immediately realize that the radio closest to him is now the emergency radio. Less often, pilots will transmit on 121-decimal-5 when intending to use another, “non-radio” communications system (or, at least, a system that is separate from the VHF/UHF radios). One will occasionally hear cabin announcements from pilots who selected the emergency radio instead of the intercom, as well as disussions about operational matters when pilots use the emergency radio when they actually intended to make a call by satellite phone. Although quite embarassing, these incidents are, generally speaking, not a big deal – a pilot might hear a snarky “You’re on GUARD!” message from another pilot or from a controller (indicating that he has improperly used a guarded frequency), but unless this happens very frequently due to carelessness, that snide comment is usually the only punishment.
Intentional misuse without further malicious intent is usually punished similarly to a misdemeanor or administrative infraction, with potential loss of license and fines. Typically, these fines are in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, though penalties in the millions to tens of millions of dollars are possible; see the docket EB-SED-12-00005692 for a case where a $35 million fine was issued.
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-16-67A1_Rcd.pdf
The most serious cases involve malicious intent beyond the mere improper use of radio signals, and they are prosecuted criminally. Aside from FAA and FCC statutes, radio trespass with harmful intent can be treated as an attack on aviation. This is a felony, meaning that in such cases, the defendant isn’t merely going to lose his money, radio equiptment, and radio license – he could lose his freedom, or even his life.
IV. Radio Is A Postcard, Not A Letter:
In the Western World, punishment for meowing on 121-decimal-5 MHz would probably wouldn’t involve prison time, though it certainly could, especially if disruption of emergency communications turned out to be a factor in a serious accident – something that, thankfully, has not yet happened, but certainly could. However, fines in the tens of thousands of dollars and loss of employment and FAA licensing would still be a high price to pay for a prank. This strongly suggests, at least to me, that the pilots who are doing this don’t think they’ll get caught. Here is some commentary from CNN news reporter Pete Muntean:
What Muntean is saying is technically true: There is, indeed, no “caller ID” on air traffic control radio. However, this is an incredibly retarded comment, and I’m not sure if Muntean himself is retarded (possibly it’s a requirement to be a reporter for CNN, just as it is for FOX and the rest of the mainstream media), or if he was told to say this by some writer or “AI” bot or whatever, but I don’t understand what the point of this statement is. Yes, of course there’s no “caller ID” on ATC radio, because…caller ID is for phone calls, hence the name, and radio transmissions of this sort are not phone calls. There’s also no caller ID on emails, and there’s no postal return address on smoke signals or yodels. These are all different forms of communication. I suspect that this inane commentary is an example of what a certain Mr. Wakimoto called the “TBU”, or “true, but useless”, method: a strategy of overwhelming a target by providing information that, while not untrue, cannot be used to solve the problem at hand or answer the relevant question-of-interest, and hence interferes with problem-solving by wasting cognitive resources. In this way, it’s similar to chaff: a material that produces RADAR returns that aren’t technically false (there is something present at the physical location where a return is shown – namely, a piece of chaff, which is usually a metallized bit of thread destined to float down and join the megatons of microplastics polluting our Earth), but which distracts from more important RADAR-reflecting objects.
If we take Muntean’s commentary literally, it’s true-but-useless: TBU. However, if we take it figuratively, it would imply that radio calls are anonymous, or at least pseudononymous: that if a man transmits on the radio and doesn’t identify himself, there is no way to “forcefully” identify him. Presumably, the pilots meowing on 121.5 MHz also believe that, as long as they don’t transmit their callsigns or other personal information, their radio calls can’t be traced back to them. This, however, is far from the truth.
In reality, radio signal tracking is highly-developed: it’s a field that is both old, dating back more than a century, and extremely active, in the sense that new methods and refinements are being developed all the time, especially for military use. Obviously, not all capabilities and techniques are described in public sources, since cutting-edge approaches to SIGINT, or Signals Intelligence, are closely guarded by governments and arms manufacturers alike. That said,
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0xDADE: “I don’t fuck with ion beams” (https://soundcloud.com/0xdade, “Hackers & Thugs”)