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Shortwave Number Stations

RaM said:
Used to listen in regularly bring back the Lincolnshire Poacher all is forgiven.
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Ditto snap. But...The Poacher can return, at any time. And his spokeswoman may well do so, soon
 
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There's a new article on the well known Russian radio beacon:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170801-the-ghostly-radio-station-that-no-one-claims-to-run

In the middle of a Russian swampland, not far from the city of St Petersburg, is a rectangular iron gate. Beyond its rusted bars is a collection of radio towers, abandoned buildings and power lines bordered by a dry-stone wall. This sinister location is the focus of a mystery which stretches back to the height of the Cold War.

It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station, “MDZhB”, that no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades, it’s been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone. Every few seconds it’s joined by a second sound, like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. Then the drone continues.

Etc.
 
Funny this thread should come up, I was watching a spy movie from 1970 called The Executioner where the hero uses a numbers station with his code book and decoder when he's behind the Iron Curtain. He adds the twist that the message should have the first word misspelled so he can know it's from a trusted source, so that was 47 years ago and the technology doesn't seem to have moved on at all. Though it must have been common knowledge to appear in a mainstream movie.
 
Ermintruder said:
History is written by the victors, and it is re-edited every day.
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...by advertising people more interested in snappy headlines than truth and accuracy.
 
Yithian said:
...by advertising people more interested in snappy headlines than truth and accuracy.
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Well, if 'advertising' in this context is a euphemism for controlled &/or distracted humanity (nb by mechanisms that are intrinsic and unquestioned beyond mere conspiratorial collusion) then yes, exactly so.

Cherrybomb said:
I hate to admit it but I have the Lincolnshire Poacher as my current mobile phones ringtone :oops::oops:
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Those bars of music, with compressed audio bandwidth, hiss and fading, are one of the most incomprehendably-terrifying sounds I have ever heard. Long long before the mere internet, those of us who were on many other 'nets', over forty years ago, we, the listeners who heard, and tried to understand....we appreciate (or ar least respect) the chilling atmospheric significance of those shrill notes.

INT21 said:
Did anyone here ever listen to radio Tirana ?
INT21
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Oh yes indeed. And I still (either consequently, or incidently) have some frightning ideas and theories about....Albania. Perhaps beyond what should be openly-discussed here on an internet forum. But as I grow (c)older, perhaps I also become bolder.

GNC said:
Though it must have been common knowledge to appear in a mainstream movie.
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I won't accept at all that it (the entire Numbers Station trope) was mainstream back then.

Anyone who was active back then, trying to make sense of it all, will know the one famous/infamous reprinted reference work, eponymously-known as the 'K_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Guide' (I'll allow you a single letter error at the end) If you can fill-in the gaps to authenticate, then you PM me with it's name. And if not, then you weren't really on the net at that time...

The internet itself, and in particular the Conet Project etc, have ensured that the concept has become widely known-of (nb not understood, because that state has not yet been reached). The whole area of "ute" radiofrequency content research by non-governmental enthusiasts was (and still is) substantially a hidden sub-culture, a deeper-net far below any so-called 'deep web'.
 
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That's fascinating me now, Ermintruder.
 
There are (or perhaps nowadays, were) some genuinely-odd things to be heard via proper old-school ether-riding radio. And sometimes the more you thought you'd begun to understand and decypher (well, more often, just interpret) then stranger-still became that which remained...

Perhaps not electromagnetic magic to the extent of this classic movie...but: sometimes I would almost wonder.
 
uair01 said:
There's a new article on the well known Russian radio beacon:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170801-the-ghostly-radio-station-that-no-one-claims-to-run
...
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This one - MDZhB / UVB-76 / "The Buzzer" has always fascinated me. It's basically a steadily repeating buzzing / pausing signal with separate hourly blips and occasional perfunctory voice messages.

I've always suspected The Buzzer was used as a reference signal to calibrate / coordinate something or someone else, and the occasional voice messages were secondary to its focal mission.

One (possibly semi-facetious) theory was that it was a way to ensure operators throughout the national defense network were awake / alert at all hours.

It made more sense to me that The Buzzer signal was somehow being used to index or track the ionospheric conditions critical to the earliest Soviet over-the-horizon warning radars (and / or other applications for which a steady reference signal was useful). The Buzzer first appeared in the early 1970's, before the initial OTH radar installation (Duga; "The Russian Woodpecker").
 
..And I still (either consequently, or incidently) have some frightning ideas and theories about....Albania...

Do tell, fair lady.

INT21
 
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I used to set my clock using the Boulder, Colorado short wave time signal. That was back in the days when I had a close interest in amateur radio.
I still have a modern radio with which I can resolve SSB signals, but my Morse reading capabilities have more or less gone. Sad really as I used to be an Army radio operator.

Anyone else here used slidex ?

INT21
 
INT21 said:
I used to set my clock using the Boulder, Colorado short wave time signal. That was back in the days when I had a close interest in amateur radio.
I still have a modern radio with which I can resolve SSB signals, but my Morse reading capabilities have more or less gone. Sad really as I used to be an Army radio operator.

Anyone else here used slidex ?

INT21
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My dad was a signaler in WW11, 50 years later I walked into his house
having forgot to turn off my Ham hand held the local repeater sent it's
call 12 wpm in morse and my dad read it amazing after around 50 years,
 
That's pretty impressive.
I'd have to start again at 5 wpm and work my way back up.

I did hold a 2 Metre license for a while, but let it lapse. And I do have a vhf/uhf scanner that I occasionally use.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
..And I still (either consequently, or incidently) have some frightning ideas and theories about....Albania...

Do tell, fair lady.

INT21
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You are not tuned-in to accurate information, I'm not a lady. My avatar is a picture of 'Ermintrude' but I have always been the, erm, Intruder.

I'll come back to you with some more-detailed perspectives on Albania later, perhaps with a dedicated thread.

In war, truth is the first casualty. And in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth can be seen as a revolutionary act.

INT21 said:
I did hold a 2 Metre license for a while, but let it lapse
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There's never been such a thing, but if you mean that you once held a Class B UK Amateur Radio licence which permitted transmission only on VHF frequencies and above, this was liberalised to include MF/HF access many years ago, now irrespective of an individual's ability to send and receive morse (ie to use the American term "no-code licensing").

You could revalidate your lapsed licence online with Ofcom (assuming you can locate your old licence), but failing that, I think it's possible to still revalidate (at small cost) via traditional paper-based methods, such as using crossed postal orders, Green Shield stamps or possibly even British Linen Bank 10-bob notes.

Life may be too short for you not to do this....
 
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OO, we are picky tonight.:)

But you're correct.

Mine was one of the first. Started with M.

I still have my C&G certificate (at least I think I have), so I could use that and a £20 note to renew it.

INT21
 
Ermintruder said:
It's always puzzled me that there are relatively-few cited examples of 'Letters Stations' (excepting of course the significant scary broadcasts from USAF strategic bombers).

I need to do some more thinking about this....
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Re:- 'Letters Stations'. I automatically thought of machine code/Hex? (I think that's what I mean)
 
Mr_Nemo said:
I automatically thought of machine code/Hex?
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No, I wasn't meaning 'hex' in the sense you're meaning the of hexadecimal numbering system (as in, 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F). I did literally mean just letters of the alphabet (or an alphabet), sent in five-character groups (rather than numbers). And the fact that such a combination was (and is) extremely-rare to randomly hear on the air.

Now, if we are referring to pseudo-random groups of spoken letters and numbers, heard being narrowcasted over the radio....nothing matches or surpasses the terrifying encrypted significance of Skyking (which, altough theoretically still classified as Above Top Secret, has become known within public consciousness as an apparent part of the US's international strategic nuclear forces' coded authorisation and tasking system.
SKYKING SKYKING DO NOT ANSWER

So what the heck is it?
To be honest, most of what we know about SKYKING messages is limited and most conversation about SKYKING is just speculation.

We'll start with what we do know.
  1. SKYKING is operated by the United States Military. Some of the messages are transmitted from Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska (the ones that end in "Offutt Out"). This is the headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) which is charged with space operations (such as military satellites), information operations (such as information warfare), missile defense, global command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR), global strike and strategic deterrence (the United States nuclear arsenal), and combating weapons of mass destruction
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It can be seen (no...heard) as being the voice of the end of the world....or at the very least, the continuous overt capability of making substantial parts of the world, end.....should that be decided to be ordered.

SKYKING and MAINSAIL is/was also used in connection with spy-plane missions...

severs1966 said:
Never sat a morse test.
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Oh, I certainly have, in a number of ways (including in the UK licensed sense that you're meaning....to which I say
-.- -. which, if you can't read morse, is KN barred, dahdidahdahdit, 'the station indicates that it has paused transmission, and gives invitation to the previously-nominated station to go ahead'.....some of us have been using proto-emoticons since the 1960s)
 
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I bought a late 1940s vintage shortwave radio (Zenith Transoceanic) and I spent more than I care to admit getting it restored so that it would work properly. It has several SW bands and, after hooking up an external antenna, it pulls in a number of radio stations from various parts of the world. I'd love to listen to one of these numbers stations but not sure they broadcast on frequency bands typically populated with regular broadcasts. I find them fascinating - perhaps a glimpse into the dark world of espionage or perhaps something else altogether.
 
SkepticalX said:
I bought a late 1940s vintage shortwave radio (Zenith Transoceanic) and I spent more than I care to admit getting it restored so that it would work properly. It has several SW bands and, after hooking up an external antenna, it pulls in a number of radio stations from various parts of the world. I'd love to listen to one of these numbers stations but not sure they broadcast on frequency bands typically populated with regular broadcasts. I find them fascinating - perhaps a glimpse into the dark world of espionage or perhaps something else altogether.
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SW radio is always a bit of hit or miss situation. Atmospheric conditions vary and effect the skip (i.e.: radio waves ability to bounce off the atmosphere and being redirected to more distant locations). Multiple skips can allow one to talk very long distances. A common goal of SW radio enthusiast is to see how far they get with the lowest possible transmitter power. Personally I haven't seen an old vacuum tube set in ages. It's very interesting what they could do prior to the avalanche of advancements made in RF.
 
This is the type of radio I am using. It is the size of a small suitcase and was designed to run on massive dry-cell batteries. Luckily, it also has a power cord. Hard to believe it was considered portable! :)

ZenTO800.jpg


My first exposure to shortwave was back in the 1960s with my grandmother's table radio. I still remember being amazed that this little box was a veritable window to the world. Even though we have easy global access now via the internet, there is still something special about picking up a radio signal that's been bouncing around the ionosphere. :)
 
SkepticalX said:
This is the type of radio I am using. It is the size of a small suitcase and was designed to run on massive dry-cell batteries. Luckily, it also has a power cord. Hard to believe it was considered portable! :)

View attachment 11027

My first exposure to shortwave was back in the 1960s with my grandmother's table radio. I still remember being amazed that this little box was a veritable window to the world. Even though we have easy global access now via the internet, there is still something special about picking up a radio signal that's been bouncing around the ionosphere. :)
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What year was the above radio made?
 
SkepticalX said:
This is the type of radio I am using. It is the size of a small suitcase and was designed to run on massive dry-cell batteries. Luckily, it also has a power cord. Hard to believe it was considered portable! :)

View attachment 11027

My first exposure to shortwave was back in the 1960s with my grandmother's table radio. I still remember being amazed that this little box was a veritable window to the world. Even though we have easy global access now via the internet, there is still something special about picking up a radio signal that's been bouncing around the ionosphere. :)
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It looks like it would withstand a nuclear war. Excellent!
 
I sat listening for many hours to get my Radio Operator B3 and then B2, doing Morse.
There is a belief that anyone can send, it is accurate receiving that matters.

I can still remember most of it, but am badly out of practice.

I never sat a civilian Morse test though.

The thing about CW is that it can still punch through when conditions are too bad for other means.

INT21
 
Mine is an 8G005YT, which was the predecessor of the G500. It was made between 1947 and 1950. Surprising how many of these have survived, stuck away in attics and basements.
 
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