"Ed G." wrote in message
. ..
Short answer yes, but not to other planets. They're too far. Any
aliens you hear are probably from the orbiting mothership or their moon
base.


PS: Communications on 28.00 MHz and above are in the amateur radio
band. "Free-banders" caught operating there are currently being cited and
often prosecuted by the FCC.


Actually... what signal makes it out of the ionosphere will make it to other
planets, and even other stars, fairly intact, if very weak. Attenuation in
free space is much, much lower than in our atmosphere, and under our
magnetic influence.

Some will say this is comparing apples and oranges, but it's not, really,
once the signal has left the ionosphere.... but:

Let's look at satellite communications. Nowadays, they are using a whopping
50 watts to beam those Ku band signals to our rooftop 15" dishes, but back
in the day they were using only 7 watts to beam the old C band analog
signals to our old 12' dishes, and this from 23,400 miles above the equator
(a bit further when you add in the vector distance between us and the
equator). When working line-of-sight, in a vacuum, there is no difference
in signal behavior between 100 KHz and 100 GHz, given the same power levels
and bandwidth for each. The main difference is in the reception... it's
much harder to make a high gain antenna for 100 KHz than it is for 100 GHz.
But, rest assured that your 27.555 MHz SSB signal is making it millions, or
billions, of miles into space... now.. this begs the philosophical question:
If there is a freeband signal making it to Antares, but there is nobody
there to hear it, is it really there?