[genewitch]

I use kiwisdr when I want to test propagation as a receiver, and I tend to transmit carrier only or Morse, which is extremely narrow and I can get a lot of power in a narrow bandwidth. If I see a line or dashes on the receiver, I know my signal makes it through, and I can switch to a protocol that can "be heard below the noise floor" and see how good the "channel" I've made is.

If I was in charge of letting the galaxy know we existed, it would just be a carrier or a solid tone as loud as I could make it. To get fancier I'd have the transmitter tap out the Fibonacci sequence as CW, as close to 1 second on pulses as I could conceivably make it - and I can get close with the kit I have now.

[fnordpiglet]

Oh I agree if I wanted to be known I would send out some highly structured signal. That assumes a lot though, particularly a desire to be known. I could imagine quite easily a counter scenario not even based on paranoia - maybe interstellar distances are so vast and the period civilizations try to be known in is so short that they all essentially give up on being known, and the chance of two civilizations overlapping in that window is much smaller than the length of an advanced civilization. Or, without watching every where all at once all the time we just won’t see them in their space life hubris phase that I feel we are likely exiting already. Realistically Drakes equation and a non Martian search for life has only been going on for 50 years. I doubt it’ll be going on in earnest for another 50. That’s a single human life span.

[iskander]

...what happens in the next 50 years?

[fnordpiglet]

My wager is little to no SETI investment as we settle into the assumption we are either the first, the only, or are structurally isolated from intelligent life in the universe. A collective shoulder shrug and a refocus on survival in our dirty terrarium.

[gizajob]

What if your second is someone else's month?