• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.
I think in the case of the BBC radio interruptions it's probably down to maintenance.
 
The Conrad is wonderfully paranoid and claustrophobic.

As spying fades, done in by electronic intelligence and the difficulty of infiltrating the terrorist world-terrrorists are important targets today,of course, being about as important as many nation-states,and, unimpeded by laws, their counter-intelligence is quite efficient-we can revisit the wild and wooly days of pre-WWII spycraft.

Those were the days!
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Numbers_Station

I just watched that film and enjoyed it. 'Not good'? It was OK.
It's a film for adults, so no flashy CGI, kung fu or unbelievable plot devices.
It's pretty understated and relatively slow moving, but is quite believable.
I suppose the only thing that raised an eyebrow with me was the use of bang-up-to-date computer technology. I imagine these numbers stations to use pretty old technology, no expense spent.
 
Time to admit my 11 year technohippy period, with no haircuts and no shaving.

From 1991 to 2002 in Oz I wrote a column called Shortwave With a Difference for two radio magazines. I stayed up most nights until almost dawn monitoring the radio waves from DC to daylight, recording military, space, pirate and intelligence radio transmissions and reporting on them and ID'ing them for the magazines. I doubt if this would be legal in the UK, but it was in Oz.

My house in the Australian bush was called amongst the radio Anoraki as GCHQ South, with its array of antennii and multiple receivers.

In 2002 I released a CD with thousands of recorded signals (some of them contributed by 3 fans) for fellow anoraks.

If this links successfully, it should take you to two very strange Numbers Station transmissions from a station known as Cherry Ripe (for reasons which will be obvious). Back in the day when I followed such things, it was posited that Numbers Stations originated from the field agents of various international intelligence communities.

https://soundcloud.com/doc227/cherryripe
https://soundcloud.com/doc227/cherryripe2
 
From 1991 to 2002 in Oz I wrote a column called Shortwave With a Difference for two radio magazines. I stayed up most nights until almost dawn monitoring the radio waves from DC to daylight, recording military, space, pirate and intelligence radio transmissions and reporting on them and ID'ing them for the magazines. I doubt if this would be legal in the UK, but it was in Oz.

Here's a different kind, a USAF "SKYKING" broadcast sent "in the blind" to airborne bombers.

https://soundcloud.com/doc227/skyking
 
It's amazing what you can pickup especially with shortwave, having the skip and such.

For me, the Fortean/Dr Strangelove aspect of the "Skyking" broadcasts is that they were (are? Has anyone listened to 11175kHz lately?)) intended for a 20-something year old, flying a 40-something year old bomber orbiting "somewhere" in the world (the broadcasts are made simultaneously by several stations worldwide, so the bomber could be anywhere), with kilotons of nuclear weapons on board.

The content, checked against sealed orders, could read (examples only) "WGR = remain on station", "WEG = orbit map reference xxx/yyy", "WSR = return to base", "WGF = proceed to target 7 and drop weapon". And these things are in the air, 24/7/365.
 
And these things are in the air, 24/7/365.
Really? There's a constantly (well, you know what I mean) airborne nuclear deterrent force, to complement the submarines? Every day's a school day.

In a similar vein, I was recently reading about Russian plans to re-introduce train-launched missiles. It sounds barmy at first glance, but how do you track half a dozen or so disguised trains among the hundreds of daily movements on thousands of kilometres of track?
 
Really? There's a constantly (well, you know what I mean) airborne nuclear deterrent force, to complement the submarines? Every day's a school day.

In a similar vein, I was recently reading about Russian plans to re-introduce train-launched missiles. It sounds barmy at first glance, but how do you track half a dozen or so disguised trains among the hundreds of daily movements on thousands of kilometres of track?

Yep, at least during the lifetime of Strategic Air Command (SAC), which was reorganised in 1992, becoming Air Combat Command (ACC), and in 2009 this became Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). The bombers backed up not just the subs but also the silo-launched ICBM's of Air Force Space Command (AFSC). I think they probably still do.

Hadn't heard of the trains plan though! Like you say, a hell of a system to track!
 
I think that is how Pakistan does it with their nuclear weapons, running them on train tracks.​
 
Looks like China is at it as well. At this rate it will turn out Sodor is a nuclear power, too.
in his best Ringo Starr voice:
Edward came wheezing up to the other engines. He was peeping and pooping with excitement.
'Edward! What on earth is going on?' asked Thomas.
'You must come and see this, Thomas! The Fat Controller has bought a new engine!'
All the trains in shed tooted and puffed, apart from Gordon, who was far too grand to join in.
'A new engine!' ejaculated Thomas. 'Have you seen it, Edward?'
'Yes! It's very large and shiny - and I know his name!'
'What is it? Oh do tell us, Edward, oh DO tell us!' chorused the engines. Even Gordon was beginning to feel curious.
'He's Bernard the Ballistic Missile Launcher', said Edward
'What's a ballstick missile luncher?' asked Percy
'A Balllistic Missile Launcher', intoned Gordon,' is a way of raining thermonuclear Hell down upon the enemies of Sodor.'
The trains peeped and pooped away, impressed at Gordon's knowledge.
etc etc
 
Yeah I was excited when I saw preview but the movie was not good. Too bad it's such an interesting subject.
I saw the Numbers Stations film in Poundland so I thought I'd give it a punt. For what it was - A riff on Assault on Precinct 13 - I thought it was pretty acceptable. But it would be interesting to see a film that focused on the numbers.
 
Returning to the excellent BBC doc 'Tracking the Lincolnshire Poacher' (naughty YT version below)...I listened to the programme again tonight for the first time in ages and something leapt out at me which I'd not noticed before.

A couple of the contributors mention the fact that the stations first appeared in great numbers in the very early 1970s and added that the number groups are read out in 'synthesised voices'; one chap stating quite plainly, 'it's a computerised / synthesised / whatever female voice". Now, listening to the recordings of those old stations, many no longer broadcasting, it occurs to me that they don't sound like anything of the sort. I can't claim any knowledge of the state of digital voice synthesis in the 1970s, but remember how ropey it was in the eighties and nineties. The spoken numbers sound to me like individual recordings that have been somehow sequenced in the desired order.

This may be pure pedantry on my part, but I'm wondering (if I'm correct that the voices were not synthesised) how the encoded messages were put together with 1970s tech. Assembling them with tape editing for automatic playout would be a massive pain, although I suppose some optimum workflow could be arrived at with practice. If I were setting up a numbers station how how I have gone about it at the height of the Cold War? Tiny individual tape loops, Mellotron-style? Some sort of early sampler? Pre-assembled or triggered by an operator at a special keyboard? It's fun to speculate.

I see Wikipedia says that they either used voice synthesis or 'live readers' (how does the article's author(s) know??) but most examples I can think of sound far too precise and mechanical for a person sitting at a microphone and more like our old friend the speaking clock. Maybe there were only a limited number of combinations, making it easy to edit individual words or groups in advance? If there were live readers in some cases what happened if they made a mistake on air? Firing squad at dawn?

Just a thought.


 
Last edited:
The technologies of earlier eras were, as you rightly surmise, still capable of limited storage/retrieval of audio (your chosen example of the Speaking Clock is perfect).

Here's a picture of a multi-platter glass disk audio player, variations of which were used since the 1940s into the 1960s/70s age of proto-digital systems.
TCB_473%20P04727-650-80.jpg


See http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/calling-time-a-history-of-the-speaking-clock-683753

Consider technologies as old as "talkies" (ie optically-recorded cinematic movie sound) run as multitrack players. Or, alternatively, magnetic recording solutions using multiple wire-loop players (so, an approach often used in pre-digital days for telemetry data recording, where flat traditional recording tape is substituted with a continuous band of wire, or metal tape). This almost bullet-proof solution was used in early aviation 'black box' cockpit voice recorders.

Whilst these solutions were absolutely not 'solid state' (by self-evident virtue of multiple moving parts), people in the modern day can understandably be surprised by the ingenious capabilities of pre-digital designs. The existence of analogue computers and multipath electromechanical sequence switching systems even during WW2 can be a revelation for many people today. The absence of silicon age semiconductors in the pre-transistor 'thermionic age' (ie valve/tube solutions) meant for limited storage capacities and switching speeds...but there were options to design and build right the way up to the boundaries set by the solutions available within any given era.

Whilst direct real-time synthesis of speech was impractical in the 40s-70s, analogue segmented speech recording and playback was most-assuredly an achievable outcome.

Also: we in the modern day have become blinded by the democratisation of technology.

Now, there is much less of a tech-gap between the toy-box of the common man, and the armouries of government & the military. Over half a century ago, that differential was vast. Now, it's massively-reduced (but only in a relative way for any given individual, it can be said)
 
Last edited:
The technologies of earlier eras was, as you rightly surmise, still capable of limited storage/retrieval of audio (your chosen example of the Speaking Clock is perfect).

Here's a picture of a multi-platter glass disk audio player, variations of which were used since the 1940s into the 1960s/70s age of proto-digital systems.
TCB_473%20P04727-650-80.jpg


See http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/calling-time-a-history-of-the-speaking-clock-683753

Consider technologies as old as "talkies" (ie optically-recorded cinematic movie sound) run as multitrack players. Or, alternatively, magnetic recording solutions using multiple wire-loop players (so, an approach often used in pre-digital days for telemetry data recording, where flat traditional recording tape is substituted with a continuous band of wire, or metal tape). This almost bullet-proof solution was used in early aviation 'black box' cockpit voice recorders.

Whilst these solutions were absolutely not 'solid state' (by self-evident virtue of multiple moving parts), people in the modern day can understandably be surprised by the ingenious capabilities of pre-digital designs. The existence of analogue computers and multipath electromechanical sequence switching systems even during WW2 can be a revelation for many people today. The absence of silicon age semiconductors in the pre-transistor 'thermionic age' (ie valve/tube solutions) meant for limited storage capacities and switching speeds...but there were options to design and build right the way up to the boundaries set by the solutions available within any given era.

Whilst direct real-time synthesis of speech was impractical in the 40s-70s, analogue segmented speech recording and playback was most-assuredly an achievable outcome.

Also: we in the modern day have become blinded by the democratisation of technology.

Now, there is much less of a tech-gap between the toy-box of the common man, and the armouries of government & the military. Over half a century ago, that differential was vast. Now, it's massively-reduced (but only in a relative way for any given individual, it can be said)

Yes indeed, there is probably much less of a gap between technologies available to the masses and the military-industrial / intelligence technowizards of 2016 as compared to the mid twentieth century, for various reasons. If there was natural-sounding speech synthesis in or before 1971 we would know about it by now (and Stanley Kubrick could have saved a few bob not hiring a voice actor for HAL).

Thanks, really enjoyed the techradar article on the early Speaking Clock kit - that's exactly the sort of thing I had in mind, or at least some sort of quick / random access analogue system to put the number station messages together to order. But then again I've always imagined number stations at that time as being deliberately cheap, lo-tech and easily disguised or quickly destroyed if necessary - like the pirate music stations I remember, whose physical infrastructure generally consisted of a battery pack and homemade transmitter on a rooftop or treetop hooked up to a cassette deck. The precise timekeeping of the spy stations seems to suggest they were / are manned or automated to some extent though.

...which practical considerations make the subject all the more intruiging, depending on your point of view!
 
he precise timekeeping of the spy stations seems to suggest they were / are manned or automated to some extent though
That's beyond doubt, though, with the caveat that many used/use remote transmitter sites (sitting immediately beside or under very high-power high-frequency radio transmission sources is not a good idea, as you're aware).

There's a set of (to me, obvious) unjoined dots, though, in solving (or perhaps defusing) the numbers stations mystery. Classic voice-based aeronautical ATIS and meteorological radio transmissions tend to sound very like numbers stations, in terms of their style and feel (sometimes with the same voice-segments and 'announcers'). They sometimes appear also to share source locations, and (more arguably) might display certain frequency spectrum co-adjacencies. You will be aware, clearly, of the deliberate use of specific frequency bands based upon times of day/times of year and known propagation trends. There is also a much-looser (but arguably still-interpretable) correlation between choices of frequency, and source of transmission versus location of intended recipient.

My postulation is also that as well as being (arguably) somehow associated with HF aeronautical transmission systems (either as a detectable/deceptive 'front', or as an inferrable reality), numbers stations are not related to much-older nautical HF or governmental PTT utility services. They are a contemporaneous post-WW2 / Cold War / "Air Age" phenomenon, that may have provided (provide?) a simultaneous tactical utility function in parallel with a strategic effect.
 
Last edited:
That's beyond doubt, though, with the caveat that many used/use remote transmitter sites (sitting immediately beside or under very high-power high-frequency radio transmission sources is not a good idea, as you're aware).

There's a set of (to me, obvious) unjoined dots, though, in solving (or perhaps defusing) the numbers stations mystery. Classic voice-based aeronautical ATIS and meteorological radio transmissions tend to sound very like numbers stations, in terms of their style and feel (sometimes with the same voice-segments and 'announcers'). They sometimes appear also to share source locations, and (more arguably) might display certain frequency spectrum co-adjacencies. You will be aware, clearly, of the deliberate use of specific frequency bands based upon times of day/times of year and known propagation trends. There is also a much-looser (but arguably still-interpretable) correlation between choices of frequency, and source of transmission versus location of intended recipient.

My postulation is also that as well as being (arguably) somehow associated with HF aeronatical transmission systems (either as a detectable/deceptive 'front', or as an inferrable reality), numbers stations are not related to much-older nautical HF or governmental PTT utility services. They are a contemporaneous post-WW2 / Cold War / "Air Age" phenomenon, that may have provided (provide?) a simultaneous tactical utility function in parallel with a strategic effect.

Sure, there must be some reason for their sudden appearance around 1971, 'course ATIS is a legimitate advisory service broadcast on officially licenced frequencies published on charts, flight guides such as Pooleys, approach plates etc and has a fairly short range being VHF, but yes, the technology (which isn't that sophisticated) might overlap with Number Stations. I'd imagine in the event of WW3, or even WW2.1, all kinds of radio channels, whatever their mode of modulation, might be commandeered for military/goverment coms and public information. Might a load of number stations burst into life when the balloon goes up? Perhaps they are waiting to be redeployed in extremis - another robust low-tech solution like the strategic steam reserve? Maybe there are stockpiles of valve radio sets squirreled away to avoid the effect of EMP damage to ICs?

Just remembered a couple of armageddon-related radio legends: basically, if the World Service (and some number staion whose name escapes me) both go off air then it's kicking off and we are doomed!
 
A couple of the contributors mention the fact that the stations first appeared in great numbers in the very early 1970s and added that the number groups are read out in 'synthesised voices'; one chap stating quite plainly, 'it's a computerised / synthesised / whatever female voice". Now, listening to the recordings of those old stations, many no longer broadcasting, it occurs to me that they don't sound like anything of the sort. I can't claim any knowledge of the state of digital voice synthesis in the 1970s, but remember how ropey it was in the eighties and nineties. The spoken numbers sound to me like individual recordings that have been somehow sequenced in the desired order.
If there were live readers in some cases what happened if they made a mistake on air? Firing squad at dawn?

As far as I'm aware, a lot of early stations did use live voices. Take 'Papa November' for example:
"Used a live/re-recorded voice until the late 80’s. Switched to an automated woman".

And mistakes did happen - They just repeated the message correctly.
 
Back
Top