This morning around 3:00 AM Central Time, I awoke to the sound of my radio cutting in and out like a CD with a scratch on it. You know, when you try to listen to a scratched up disc or watch a messed up DVD and it skips every second? That's what the radio was doing. Now here's the weird part. Every time the radio would "skip", during the half-second of silence, the baby monitor in our room would suddenly produce high-pitched frequency. That monitor is already "static-ee", because of where we have to put it due to the wall outlets, but it works fine and I can hear my son when he moves or cries. It sounded like someone was shifting through stations on the monitor, every time the radio shorted out or skipped or whatever. I want to know what could have caused this strange phenomenon. I have NEVER heard a radio skip like that. If there is a bad signal, it produces static and distortion. It wasn't an electronic short, because the back-light on the display wasn't flickering with the skipping. Does anyone know why this happened? After about 10 minutes it stopped and went back to normal. And I went back to sleep, confused.

Isn't it normal when there's a cellphone close by? I've seen it with my radio it starts skipping when there's an SMS or call coming in or for no apparent reason too when there's a cellphone close by.

is the monitor analogue or digital and do you have any cordless telephones

Yeah oddly last night around the same exact time the emergency broadcast system alert began coming on literally about every five minutes. No alert mentioned just said it was the weekly test. After around five times I finally turned the tv off.

I usually hear electronic noise coming through my TV when I'm about to receive a text message. Sometimes I hear the same noise and I don't get anything. I just assume its a signal from someone else's phone.

To the OP: Know an extreme texters in your area?
That could be what you heard.

This is because of interference from various signals being active or passing through wavelengths in your area. Therefore causing unusual disturbances never heard before. Or it could be aliens trying to contact you. :p

It sounds like a signal was jamming your radio, and at the same time causing distortion to come through the monitor. Can you remember what frequency the radio was tuned to and find out what frequency the monitor uses? A comparison might be able to locate at least what frequency was being used for the jamming/distortion.

PersonalChoice's comments are interesting as well. Does anyone know if the Emergency Broadcast System uses radio frequency to activate?

TheRedneck

Originally posted by ConspiracyCracker
I usually hear electronic noise coming through my TV when I'm about to receive a text message. Sometimes I hear the same noise and I don't get anything. I just assume its a signal from someone else's phone.

To the OP: Know an extreme texters in your area?
That could be what you heard.

I already said it wasn't cellphone activity. I know what that sounds like.

Sounds like general interference from a near by transmitter of some sort.
51MHz is right in the 6 Meter ham radio band which is just a little ways up from 49MHz used by baby monitors and baby monitors are notorious for picking up stuff near the band they operate on. Also the second harmonic frequency of 51MHz is 102MHz and you said your radio was tuned to a channel near that.
Harmonics are a multiple of the original frequency, so someone operating on 51mhz could cause some interference on 102MHz if they don't use a proper filter on their equipment.
So it could have been a ham operator tuning up his equipment and accidentally caused a bit of interference to your stuff.

As others have said cell phones can cause all kinds of interference to near by electronics because of their cruddy designs and UHF and sometimes microwave frequencies used. House cordless phones are no different.
Just because no one in your house was using one doesn't mean your next door neighbor wasn't but usually they have to be in close proximity to cause problems but who knows.

Either way I highly doubt it was aliens. As we all know aliens only talk through AM radios :p