Spent 6 months tracking a signal on 1420 MHz before I figured out my own laptop was the source

Drew Ramirez · 2026-09-25T12:15:04.97418+00:00

I got into radio astronomy as a hobby last fall, mostly just scanning frequencies with an RTL-SDR dongle and logging anything weird. For around 6 months I kept picking up this narrowband blip right near the hydrogen line, 1420 MHz, and I was convinced it was something real, maybe a pulsar or some kind of unknown source. I filled a whole notebook with timestamps and sky positions, even drove out to a field near Amarillo to get away from city noise, and the signal still showed up. Then one night my laptop battery died mid-scan and the blip vanished, so I charged it back up, same signal, and it hit me. My own Wi-Fi card was leaking just enough RF to look like a real detection, and I had been chasing my own machine for half a year. I felt so dumb I almost threw the dongle in a drawer, but now I run every setup on battery first. Has anyone else found their own gear was the thing messing up their readings?

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Spent 6 months tracking a signal on 1420 MHz before I figured out my own laptop was the source | Big Ideas Uncut - Free To Speak