Thanks. I still envision someone in an rundown apartment (flat) in a large city, sitting down in their cramped kitchen by candle light with a shortwave radio writing down the numbers and then decoding them with their one time pad to find out where the next dead drop is
@@des_smith7658 a place where a secret message is put for some else pick it up clandestinely Like the one if a chalk mark was on a post box the pickup person know go around the corner n one brick in a wall cood be pulled out n there a paper behind it
My old skipper on the fishing trawler I once worked on was obsessed with such signals. For a lot of the time he'd simply monitor the trawler from the cabin as everything was capable of auto. It meant he had hours to burn and finding obscure radio signals became his thing. Forget watching a TV set - he'd listen with delight if he discovered a new signal he'd not heard.
I forgot to include - out at sea your reception would be much better since you're not near mountains or any sources of interference other than your own engine.
Back then, many Russian trawlers were radio monitoring vessels, in fact "Russian trawler" was commonly used to denote a soviet spy vessel. I witnessed an event where a Russian trawler was just offshore from an American oil exploration base in a communist African country. They were intercepting the American walkie talkie traffic and rebroadcasting over loudspeakers just to P them off.
A few weeks ago I heard CW being transmitted below the 40m ham band, I think 6600khz. It’s almost always being transmitted but no legible messages are being sent. After doing some research, I believe it’s a French military morse training station that’s been around for a very long time. Was cool to discover!
That was probably FAV22 on 6825 kHz. They've been around for almost a century. Some of the messages are in the clear, but in French (with special morse codes for accented French characters).
There's some French spoken activity on 6660 on occasion and if you're very lucky, you'll hear MTI around mid day a one hour long dark ambient sound scape on 6665.
Thank you for making all these relatively niche videos for us radio people! I and my colleagues are professional radio engineers and it's great to see detailed info from someone who knows what they are talking about!
Interesting to hear the oth radar. I remember hearing the woodpecker on my parents valve radio when I was a kid. Never knew what it was at the time, but was told by BT/post office telecoms students about it some years later. Didn't realise where it came from until I saw videos about the chenobyl disaster zone many years later. Amazing structures.
It’s amazing what these signals are probably transmitting over the airwaves in their secret codes. It’s inspired me to get on with my radio ham course and get listening for sure
Altough the amount of number stations is supposedly dropping, they have been employed far beyond the traditional government networks. Drug cartels and other internationally operating organised criminals are known to utilise the number station system.
Just demonstrates how busy the ether is : obviously Intelligence related content that's easier to secure, faster to deliver to its intended receiver, and, as ever, a more financially viable option than hard-wired systems. Cheers for this Lewis, another insightful bit of content. 👍
I hope that this gets people to be more aware about the secret communications that are around our small globe. I really wish that you would have touched on the many piggyback signals that ride as FSK in the side bands of seemingly legitimate broadcasts. Keep up the SWL.
Yes! Many national SW broadcasters have data embedded in either the sideband or in the main stream itself as bursts that are easily mistaken for static / atmospheric noise. This also used to be done with MW stations originating in Eastern Europe.
My late Father was fascinated by short-wave broadcasts. He had (it's still working!) a Hacker Huntsman radio and would spend hours listening to foreign language stations or what seemed like random sounds while he was sat in bed. Thanks for sharing!!
VC01 The Chinese Robot 7207kHz USB around 1100UTC is one that I hear most nights. Rapid fire Chinese numbers that are computer generated, sent seemingly for hours on end. Reported to be air defence related, but spooky to listen to. Excellent video Lewis!
I've been dabbling on the HF bands since the early 70s. I even spent time in the military conducting electronic warfare and doing cryptography. I've been following number stations since I was a teenager and am still no closer to understanding them. I developed a good eye for spotting HF log periodic and cage dipoles on embassy roofs. I have noticed there are less and less antennas these days.
When I was in the military working HFDF in South East Asia, our unit intercepted and monitored a transmitter that was transmitting numbers messages in multiple Asian languages. I participated in DF'ing the transmitter and we located a mobile transmitter that traveled 150 miles in one direction then returned to it's starting point. Our unit followed procedures for unknown (UI) stations and the information ended up at NSA. Within 2 weeks our unit was notified that we were to discontinue all monitoring and location activity of that mobile transmitter. We were ordered to destroy any record of the transmitter and it's activity and to forget that we ever heard it! Yes, we were told to "forget" that we heard it! If we were found to be discussing the transmitter, we would be severely punished!
@@RetiredRadioChaser Therefore, the whole situation was highly suspect. We are all supposed and expected to be living in ignorance - because that’s what the system wants.
I read that digital radio transmission doesn't use frequency bands (i'm a complete noob at all this), how does that work ? Sorry i know it's unrelated.
I used to have an Eddystone short wave receiver in the 1970's. You could listen to German women reciting hour upon hour of numbers. I used to listen to a recorded message repeating the words 'Papa Musimba' too. I have no idea what that was about. Then there was a period where there was a tone like a wood pecker on multiple frequencies. This made the news, and they speculated that these signals where from the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan.
The best known woodpecker was actually another OTH radar system belonging to the USSR which was based in Ukraine and called Duga but nicknamed the "Russian Woodpecker", if you haven't heard of it then please do have a search cos it's an amazing bit of Hardware and history!
In my early days as a shortwave listener back in the 70’s the Russian woodpecker was all over the HF bands, but at the time I didn’t know what was causing that terrible noise sweeping across the band, very annoying when listening to the radio! I have seen some videos on the Drugga, and was amazed at the size of the structure.
@@cwwhg There's an old youtube channel called Bionerd23, run by a girl who visited and climbed all over the Duga antenna some years ago. It's a great video and pretty scary, since the structure is rusting away, and she climbs very high on it. Do a search on her username and check out her channel. She is insane.
Leave it to the Europeans to use such an inefficient mode. In the US, we used letter stations. I once had the opportunity to read apparently random sequences of five letters (as demonstrated in the video), from a remote HF transmitter (a generic Collins SSB transmitter) for a couple of hours, on the pretense that the site, which ordinarily used tropospheric scatter for communications, had a failure of its primary power source, and was reduced to a single 100 kW backup generator. which was being used to power a coffee pot and a MARS station, which I was manning. The MARS station, not the coffee pot. I wasn't a coffee drinker at the time. The sad thing is that this was at the height of the Cold War, and yet we are closer to nuclear war now than we were then. Then, it was a game. Now, it it the actions of desperate tyrants.
There was a number station project a few years ago. It's Called the conet project. There (if you can find them) 4 fun packed cds of number stations. Great for annoying your family and friends.
I managed to crack the first 2 Russian signals quite quickly. The 1st is a very popular kossack dance number played in reverse. The 2nd is a multiple food order to Uber eats.....but I could be wrong?
You could be wrong, but probably not. In order for emergency messages NOT to reveal to the enemy that there is an emergency, there must be traffic at all times, of the same bandwidth as the maximum that is allowed during actual emergencies. The content of the messages is unimportant, so Uber Eats orders work just as well as pages from the local farm report..
Very interesting indeed - whilst not possible to decode, what would be interesting is linking the volume of messages/traffic around world events to see if there is an increase in transmissions. Whilst not secret, I found monitoring POCSAG / Pagers very "interesting" - some of the messages can be quite distressing tho.
Oh yes POCSAG is very interesting and distressing, I found a university medical network pager system and my god. The amount of sensitive personal, and medical information broadcast in plain text is extremely distressing. I have found private hospital email addresses, patient room numbers, patients names and diagnosis, prescription orders, and other distressing information, all broadcast in plain text for anyone smart enough to decode it to read. The frequency for it is 152.180MHz if you're near Pennsylvania.
I have always found these things fascinating... From the number stations through to the modern digital tones... I often wonder if they are just used to take up the resources of different nations, when in reality they may not have a true purpose. Time wasted trying to decrypt these signals is time not being spent on something else.
Your intro " Nobody knows what they do definitively, especially when it comes to their content." For a moment I thought you were talking about BBC Radio One. As ever all the best , and thanks for another great video.
The electro magnetic spectrum is truly fascinating, having worked in mobile comms for many years and fortunate to be on top of multiple mountains and stood on towers next to massive feed horn's and antennas pumping out KW of radio power , I am forever amazed and in awe of it. SW even more so. Nice channel, new sub here.
Always been very curious about these from as far back as a child tuning around with my little transistor radio and discovering the Russian woodpecker 😁
im 16, turned about 2 months ago, and i find these interesting. reminds me of that one time i was out hiking with a radio, and somebody tuned into our signal somehow and they were unintelligable, i was young so i ran looking for my dad terrified. probably just some people passing by though.
Pretty sure I heard the rogue flutophone orchestra, that was outlawed 40 years ago when the fifth graders who were playing caused several pacemakers to fail simultaneously. Six grandparents had to be rushed to the hospital
Hi Comrade Wingray It's Stakker Humanoid here, the Radio Professional - whilst you are just a Radio Amateur. You have correctly shown how OTH works. Australia does indeed transmit to MediaCityUK Salford, Greater Manchester as you prove at 08:00. We can clearly see the OTH receiver station is based at MediaCityUK, Salford, Greater Manchester. The Premier Inn. There is NO direct line of sight between Australia and the UK. So all comms between Australia and the UK are done "Over The Horizon" (OTH) using OTH Radar.
Very interesting. Unfortunately I live in a modern very energy effeciently insulated apartment so I have trouble hearing even strong FM signals, let alone anything on the SW/MW/LW bands. Especially since each apartment in the building has a remote thermostat installed that seems to push out very loud interference on a really broad spectrum.
Just hang a ten metre wire out of the window, use a tuning coil to make the good wavelength (I have a FET grid-dip for the purpose). The thermostat is a 10 mW 433 MHz transmitter but put out a lot of spurious emission. Including the receiver- it is a super-reactive radio with an unshielded oscillator. The real trouble are the network extenders that sends a big signal over the power wires; they kill any SW receiver...
The purpose of numbers stations today (or letters stations, or MCFM coded stations) is not just to freak out the people who for whatever reason are still monitoring the HF bands, but to keep a regularly maintained communications network that will survive the destruction of all space-based networks. The fact that voice transmissions, as inefficient as they are, are still used, implies that the backups go all the way back to code books and human operators. I remember, from decades ago, watching a communications officer encoding a message manually using a code book. He would look up what he needed to say, which would lead him to a certain page of the book, where he would copy the first unused sequence on that page onto a notepad, then cross that sequence off in the code book. Which made this a one-time pad. "Cool," I thought. Now, I had the proper clearance to be in the room, but hardly the need to know, so this was a security breach in his case. Lucky for him, I was working for the same agency he was.
@@Nielsquake0 That's what _I_ thought, and I was glad he bent the rules a little so I could. Mind you, this was during an exercise, not a real-world emergency.
Interesting video. Years ago, I remember hearing what could be referred to as the "moaning voices", which originate somewhere out in the ocean. I heard it somewhere above 30MHz and it faded out too quickly for me to record. The broadcast sounded like a large number of people crying or "moaning" as it is described. So far, it has never been identified.
When I was a kid, I ran across a few of these playing with a transistor radio of my grandfather’s. These are genius because think of all the old technologies we have, as a society, mostly abandoned. How many people really still listen to radio on a daily basis when not commuting or something of the sort? Makes me wonder what other bits of older tech they use for this purpose.
I used to work for a U.S. government agency that used high frequency radio direction finding (DF). The agency was not part of or related to the military. On occasion I would DF the EAM's. Sometimes it appeared that there were two line of bearings (LOBs), one stronger than the other, when the EAM was transmitting, indicating that the echo may have been caused by two different transmitters on the same frequency. One signal delayed for what ever reason, which may have been one or more of the reasons you mentioned in your video.
You mean EAMs on HFGCS? The system that transmits simultaneously from 13 ground stations? It's normal to hear a transmission on HFGCS twice as an echo if one happens to be within range of 2 transmitters, since one is closer than the other.
Well, the US has a history of doing very long baseline coherent broadcasts. The most prosaic of these is the interaction between WWV in Colorado, and WWVH in Hawaii. These two stations are synchronized very closely, and they both transmit signals with AM with low modulation, like below 50%, which means that they never completely cancel each other out. In practice, this means if you can hear either of the stations, you get an accurate time reference, but hearing both does not ruin it. So going back to what you say, if you were monitoring 5.000 000 and 10.000 000 MHz, you could get two different DF bearings, both of which are valid.
@@BrightBlueJim I don't remember if I ever saw two Line of Bearings (LOB) on WWV. I remember hearing the male and female voices announcing what the time would be at the beep, indicating that I was hearing both Hawaii and Colorado stations. The Colorado WWV station was alerted for a fix which was used as a calibration exercise. Calibration fixes on known transmitter sites was a daily or weekly exercise, I don't remember which. What usually occured was your DF site would have an LOB for which ever station had the strongest signal if I remember correctly. Also depending on the the variables of HF propagation, your DF site might only hear one WWV station and not the other. It has been 26 years since I worked HFDF. One interesting phenomenon that I discovered was related to the Gray Line effect. When a European LOB would normally shoot in a North East direction, if the transmitting station was in the Gray Line and the DF site I was at was in the Gray Line, the LOB would go north.
@@RetiredRadioChaser In RDF, you take the receiver peaks vs. bearing, and it is entirely possible to have two peaks. When listening from two different locations, you have two bearings for each receiver site, with four intersection points, which are ambiguous, unless you have a way of knowing which bearing line corresponds to each transmitter. In the case of WWV and WWVH, the voice recordings are staggered so they do not step on each other, so this is pretty easy. I don't remember if this was always the case, but you can tell by looking at the specifications of each station's current hourly broadcast sequence that they are quite specifically designed not to interfere with each other. I don't know how their carrier phases are coordinated, but since the carriers are based on the reference clocks, and these are kept synchronized between the two stations, they are coherent at all times.
Very enjoyable and interesting Lewis. I went past RAF Croughton once, massive HF log periodic in the grounds. Not sure it is there now. Digital military transmissions on HF is something I find fascinating.
It was radar near Prityat' near Kiev in modern Ukraine. Modern Russian Voronezh systems are using different frequencies and don't make interference with short bands.
Those Russian stations sound great. I bet they could be sampled and used to create some seriously banging tunes. The first one actually reminded me of the auto-generated music on TempleOS
Numbers and other clandestine radio transmissions have always fascinated me. Thanks for the great video (as always), Lewis! Also, the antenna p0rn is always appreciated. 🤓😉
Thanks for sharing. Indeed, as a ham radio (YO2MNE) I also had the curiosity of listening to some "strange numbers stations". Did you noted down maybe a list with stations and frequencies? 73!
I think you will find that JORN did use Hawkwind's "Silver Machine" opening notes. Hawkwind were well known for creating binary shift keying, they developed it on early synthesisers and radio hams loved it!
You have your finger on the pulse of clandestine transmissions! Amazing! 'Foxtrot'. I wonder if that would be used for f had that been developed in a different era, as it's only other meaning is a swing era American dance form.👍
Or maybe it's the other way around - the dance may have been named after something beginning with 'F'. No, probably not. There could have been many, many different words used for each letter, so if there wasn't such a dance, it could have just been "fox". Indeed, many people shorten "foxtrot" to "fox" anyway.
I saw a reply below mention "Russian Woodpecker." There is a 2015 documentary called "The Russian Woodpecker." I believe it can be found on Amazon or Netflix. I suggest watching it if anyone is interested in this stuff. It will blow your mind.
I partly remember seeing something that happened in America, they picked up a frequency through a plug socket in a house, I think it was called the Woodpecker. Could these frequencies be some kind of phsy op that affect the mentality of the people. Just asking g for a friend 😆
I don't understand why these sre still in use, especially with Internet being able to encrypt all 2way traffic, it seems odd to me...saying that, I do love this stuff...it's fascinating
"Skybird, this is the SAC Airborne Command Post with a test of the Primary Alerting System and morning wake up call...Acknowledge now" I heard this one morning when I was on alert at a Titan II launch complex waiting on crew change over. It must have been the controller's last day on the Airborne...
Correction there are 4 variants of X06, not three. X06 (6 separate tones 213465), X06a (2 alternating tones 121212), X06b (2 or 3 tones 111666 or 112666), X06c (rising scale 123456) and X06d (single tone 111111 or 666666).
I’m curious to know what you do to minimize interference from electronic devices? I have trouble with that even at a house in the country with minimal electronics in it (I think b/c it has a smart meter installed in the loop)
There are some antenna arrays in some of those stock photos would be very nice to have for my ham radio setup. Thanks for the videos. I just discovered your UA-cam channel today. 11/03/22
I wonder, could you possibly put the name of the B-Roll we are watching in the upper right? I often find myself wondering what we are looking at (I know it's not related to the audio playing, that's not an issue 😅, just hoping to learn what the B-Roll is).
How did you get an uncensored sat pic of the E11 Warsaw sation? (I always think of it as E11 even tho it's the entire P11 family) if you put the coords into google maps now, that section is blured... tho you can still look around with street view lol
Thanks. I still envision someone in an rundown apartment (flat) in a large city, sitting down in their cramped kitchen by candle light with a shortwave radio writing down the numbers and then decoding them with their one time pad to find out where the next dead drop is
Maybe somebody is?
😂
What's a dead drop
@@des_smith7658 a place where a secret message is put for some else pick it up clandestinely
Like the one if a chalk mark was on a post box the pickup person know go around the corner n one brick in a wall cood be pulled out n there a paper behind it
@@joerowland7350 thanks
My old skipper on the fishing trawler I once worked on was obsessed with such signals. For a lot of the time he'd simply monitor the trawler from the cabin as everything was capable of auto. It meant he had hours to burn and finding obscure radio signals became his thing. Forget watching a TV set - he'd listen with delight if he discovered a new signal he'd not heard.
If he's alive today he would have a ball with SDR.
That really is fascinating stuff.
I forgot to include - out at sea your reception would be much better since you're not near mountains or any sources of interference other than your own engine.
Back then, many Russian trawlers were radio monitoring vessels, in fact "Russian trawler" was commonly used to denote a soviet spy vessel.
I witnessed an event where a Russian trawler was just offshore from an American oil exploration base in a communist African country. They were intercepting the American walkie talkie traffic and rebroadcasting over loudspeakers just to P them off.
@@crabby7668 Angola?
A few weeks ago I heard CW being transmitted below the 40m ham band, I think 6600khz. It’s almost always being transmitted but no legible messages are being sent. After doing some research, I believe it’s a French military morse training station that’s been around for a very long time. Was cool to discover!
That was probably FAV22 on 6825 kHz. They've been around for almost a century. Some of the messages are in the clear, but in French (with special morse codes for accented French characters).
@@sukamakanpedas ah, yes, that’s it, thanks!
Some are CW, some phone and some data.
We'll never really know the whole story.
There's some French spoken activity on 6660 on occasion and if you're very lucky, you'll hear MTI around mid day a one hour long dark ambient sound scape on 6665.
Thank you for making all these relatively niche videos for us radio people! I and my colleagues are professional radio engineers and it's great to see detailed info from someone who knows what they are talking about!
Interesting to hear the oth radar. I remember hearing the woodpecker on my parents valve radio when I was a kid. Never knew what it was at the time, but was told by BT/post office telecoms students about it some years later. Didn't realise where it came from until I saw videos about the chenobyl disaster zone many years later. Amazing structures.
I used to heat the Russian woodpecker radar in the 80s
It’s amazing what these signals are probably transmitting over the airwaves in their secret codes. It’s inspired me to get on with my radio ham course and get listening for sure
I'm in Birmingham. I'm taking the Foundation exam this month.
MESSAGES DECODED:
sender: sup
response: nm wbu
Altough the amount of number stations is supposedly dropping, they have been employed far beyond the traditional government networks. Drug cartels and other internationally operating organised criminals are known to utilise the number station system.
@@stuartchapman5171 wow that’s interesting. Wonder how they crack them?
@@Corruption-uncensored That's the thing, you can't crack them, unless you have a one time code book. Look up number stations and one time pass books.
Just demonstrates how busy the ether is : obviously Intelligence related content that's easier to secure, faster to deliver to its intended receiver, and, as ever, a more financially viable option than hard-wired systems. Cheers for this Lewis, another insightful bit of content. 👍
1:24 I feel that there is a telephone for that, a soldler dials a code on a phone and transmits a message
I hope that this gets people to be more aware about the secret communications that are around our small globe. I really wish that you would have touched on the many piggyback signals that ride as FSK in the side bands of seemingly legitimate broadcasts. Keep up the SWL.
Yes! Many national SW broadcasters have data embedded in either the sideband or in the main stream itself as bursts that are easily mistaken for static / atmospheric noise. This also used to be done with MW stations originating in Eastern Europe.
My late Father was fascinated by short-wave broadcasts. He had (it's still working!) a Hacker Huntsman radio and would spend hours listening to foreign language stations or what seemed like random sounds while he was sat in bed. Thanks for sharing!!
VC01 The Chinese Robot 7207kHz USB around 1100UTC is one that I hear most nights.
Rapid fire Chinese numbers that are computer generated, sent seemingly for hours on end.
Reported to be air defence related, but spooky to listen to.
Excellent video Lewis!
I heard it on 5.828 mHz the other night in California.. it's quite often audible here....
@@stevengill1736 Thanks Steven!
It seems to have shifted from 7207 so I will have a listen on 5828.
I've been dabbling on the HF bands since the early 70s. I even spent time in the military conducting electronic warfare and doing cryptography. I've been following number stations since I was a teenager and am still no closer to understanding them.
I developed a good eye for spotting HF log periodic and cage dipoles on embassy roofs. I have noticed there are less and less antennas these days.
When I was in the military working HFDF in South East Asia, our unit intercepted and monitored a transmitter that was transmitting numbers messages in multiple Asian languages. I participated in DF'ing the transmitter and we located a mobile transmitter that traveled 150 miles in one direction then returned to it's starting point. Our unit followed procedures for unknown (UI) stations and the information ended up at NSA.
Within 2 weeks our unit was notified that we were to discontinue all monitoring and location activity of that mobile transmitter. We were ordered to destroy any record of the transmitter and it's activity and to forget that we ever heard it! Yes, we were told to "forget" that we heard it! If we were found to be discussing the transmitter, we would be severely punished!
@@RetiredRadioChaser
Therefore, the whole situation was highly suspect. We are all supposed and expected to be living in ignorance - because that’s what the system wants.
I read that digital radio transmission doesn't use frequency bands (i'm a complete noob at all this), how does that work ? Sorry i know it's unrelated.
@@GaryMcKinnonUFO I'm afraid you are. Go on line, find a Ham radio course and start from there.
@Me Myself It's no secret to those who understand radio communications.
I used to have an Eddystone short wave receiver in the 1970's. You could listen to German women reciting hour upon hour of numbers. I used to listen to a recorded message repeating the words 'Papa Musimba' too. I have no idea what that was about. Then there was a period where there was a tone like a wood pecker on multiple frequencies. This made the news, and they speculated that these signals where from the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan.
The best known woodpecker was actually another OTH radar system belonging to the USSR which was based in Ukraine and called Duga but nicknamed the "Russian Woodpecker", if you haven't heard of it then please do have a search cos it's an amazing bit of Hardware and history!
Might it have been G15 you were hearing? ua-cam.com/video/VsIOaGL0DXM/v-deo.html
In my early days as a shortwave listener back in the 70’s the Russian woodpecker was all over the HF bands, but at the time I didn’t know what was causing that terrible noise sweeping across the band, very annoying when listening to the radio! I have seen some videos on the Drugga, and was amazed at the size of the structure.
@@cwwhg There's an old youtube channel called Bionerd23, run by a girl who visited and climbed all over the Duga antenna some years ago. It's a great video and pretty scary, since the structure is rusting away, and she climbs very high on it. Do a search on her username and check out her channel. She is insane.
Leave it to the Europeans to use such an inefficient mode. In the US, we used letter stations. I once had the opportunity to read apparently random sequences of five letters (as demonstrated in the video), from a remote HF transmitter (a generic Collins SSB transmitter) for a couple of hours, on the pretense that the site, which ordinarily used tropospheric scatter for communications, had a failure of its primary power source, and was reduced to a single 100 kW backup generator. which was being used to power a coffee pot and a MARS station, which I was manning. The MARS station, not the coffee pot. I wasn't a coffee drinker at the time.
The sad thing is that this was at the height of the Cold War, and yet we are closer to nuclear war now than we were then. Then, it was a game. Now, it it the actions of desperate tyrants.
There was a number station project a few years ago. It's Called the conet project. There (if you can find them) 4 fun packed cds of number stations. Great for annoying your family and friends.
ua-cam.com/video/kyoN1VSjUVE/v-deo.html
I managed to crack the first 2 Russian signals quite quickly. The 1st is a very popular kossack dance number played in reverse. The 2nd is a multiple food order to Uber eats.....but I could be wrong?
You could be wrong, but probably not. In order for emergency messages NOT to reveal to the enemy that there is an emergency, there must be traffic at all times, of the same bandwidth as the maximum that is allowed during actual emergencies. The content of the messages is unimportant, so Uber Eats orders work just as well as pages from the local farm report..
Very interesting indeed - whilst not possible to decode, what would be interesting is linking the volume of messages/traffic around world events to see if there is an increase in transmissions. Whilst not secret, I found monitoring POCSAG / Pagers very "interesting" - some of the messages can be quite distressing tho.
Oh yes POCSAG is very interesting and distressing, I found a university medical network pager system and my god. The amount of sensitive personal, and medical information broadcast in plain text is extremely distressing. I have found private hospital email addresses, patient room numbers, patients names and diagnosis, prescription orders, and other distressing information, all broadcast in plain text for anyone smart enough to decode it to read. The frequency for it is 152.180MHz if you're near Pennsylvania.
Another great video. Good to see old analog transmissions are alive and well in this cold digital age.
I have always found these things fascinating... From the number stations through to the modern digital tones... I often wonder if they are just used to take up the resources of different nations, when in reality they may not have a true purpose. Time wasted trying to decrypt these signals is time not being spent on something else.
Wow love radio been doing it for 40 years now and love it. Thanks for putting this out there for us. Great fun cheers 🥂
Bravo Lewis, never fails to bring fascinating content!
I've heard all of these at one time or another. Thank you for this
informational video and the identifications.
Your intro " Nobody knows what they do definitively, especially when it comes to their content." For a moment I thought you were talking about BBC Radio One.
As ever all the best , and thanks for another great video.
Somebody must know!
@@andyleatherbarrow7322 At least two people, ideally...
The electro magnetic spectrum is truly fascinating, having worked in mobile comms for many years and fortunate to be on top of multiple mountains and stood on towers next to massive feed horn's and antennas pumping out KW of radio power , I am forever amazed and in awe of it. SW even more so. Nice channel, new sub here.
Another fascinating video. Thanks Lewis!
Always been very curious about these from as far back as a child tuning around with my little transistor radio and discovering the Russian woodpecker 😁
Used to listen to that woodpecker signal all the time when I was young and wonder what it was.
This is fascinating I would love to see more content like this
Thanks Lewis
Here in Canada (near Toronto) I hear a lot of Over-The-Horizon signals. Never knew what they were until now!
im 16, turned about 2 months ago, and i find these interesting.
reminds me of that one time i was out hiking with a radio, and somebody tuned into our signal somehow and they were unintelligable, i was young so i ran looking for my dad terrified.
probably just some people passing by though.
Pretty sure I heard the rogue flutophone orchestra, that was outlawed 40 years ago when the fifth graders who were playing caused several pacemakers to fail simultaneously. Six grandparents had to be rushed to the hospital
As a general class ham here in call section 8 in the states, I never knew anything like this existed.
Cheers, KB8MAT
Hi Comrade Wingray
It's Stakker Humanoid here, the Radio Professional - whilst you are just a Radio Amateur.
You have correctly shown how OTH works.
Australia does indeed transmit to MediaCityUK Salford, Greater Manchester as you prove at 08:00. We can clearly see the OTH receiver station is based at MediaCityUK, Salford, Greater Manchester. The Premier Inn.
There is NO direct line of sight between Australia and the UK.
So all comms between Australia and the UK are done "Over The Horizon" (OTH) using OTH Radar.
Very interesting. Unfortunately I live in a modern very energy effeciently insulated apartment so I have trouble hearing even strong FM signals, let alone anything on the SW/MW/LW bands. Especially since each apartment in the building has a remote thermostat installed that seems to push out very loud interference on a really broad spectrum.
You can listen to shortwave on your computer if you want.
@@woodhonky3890 yep, I have to look into that.
Just hang a ten metre wire out of the window, use a tuning coil to make the good wavelength (I have a FET grid-dip for the purpose).
The thermostat is a 10 mW 433 MHz transmitter but put out a lot of spurious emission. Including the receiver- it is a super-reactive radio with an unshielded oscillator. The real trouble are the network extenders that sends a big signal over the power wires; they kill any SW receiver...
The purpose of numbers stations today (or letters stations, or MCFM coded stations) is not just to freak out the people who for whatever reason are still monitoring the HF bands, but to keep a regularly maintained communications network that will survive the destruction of all space-based networks. The fact that voice transmissions, as inefficient as they are, are still used, implies that the backups go all the way back to code books and human operators. I remember, from decades ago, watching a communications officer encoding a message manually using a code book. He would look up what he needed to say, which would lead him to a certain page of the book, where he would copy the first unused sequence on that page onto a notepad, then cross that sequence off in the code book. Which made this a one-time pad. "Cool," I thought. Now, I had the proper clearance to be in the room, but hardly the need to know, so this was a security breach in his case. Lucky for him, I was working for the same agency he was.
That's cool as hell you got to experience that actually
@@Nielsquake0 That's what _I_ thought, and I was glad he bent the rules a little so I could. Mind you, this was during an exercise, not a real-world emergency.
Never has something so boring been so fascinating. Thanks for putting this together.
Interesting video. Years ago, I remember hearing what could be referred to as the "moaning voices", which originate somewhere out in the ocean. I heard it somewhere above 30MHz and it faded out too quickly for me to record. The broadcast sounded like a large number of people crying or "moaning" as it is described. So far, it has never been identified.
1:20 Reminds me at "The day after (1983)" - OMG!!!!
Greetings from germany
Ha! Thanks for pointing this episode out! I’ll keep an ear out for these! Cheers!
When I was a kid, I ran across a few of these playing with a transistor radio of my grandfather’s. These are genius because think of all the old technologies we have, as a society, mostly abandoned. How many people really still listen to radio on a daily basis when not commuting or something of the sort? Makes me wonder what other bits of older tech they use for this purpose.
Excellent yet again Lewis. Very interesting. 73
Brilliant video Louis.. I've been using my R30 over the last year to do the same. I have a few videos on my channel.
I used to work for a U.S. government agency that used high frequency radio direction finding (DF). The agency was not part of or related to the military.
On occasion I would DF the EAM's. Sometimes it appeared that there were two line of bearings (LOBs), one stronger than the other, when the EAM was transmitting, indicating that the echo may have been caused by two different transmitters on the same frequency. One signal delayed for what ever reason, which may have been one or more of the reasons you mentioned in your video.
I do not remember if the EAM's were alerted to determine a location of the transmitters.
You mean EAMs on HFGCS? The system that transmits simultaneously from 13 ground stations? It's normal to hear a transmission on HFGCS twice as an echo if one happens to be within range of 2 transmitters, since one is closer than the other.
Well, the US has a history of doing very long baseline coherent broadcasts. The most prosaic of these is the interaction between WWV in Colorado, and WWVH in Hawaii. These two stations are synchronized very closely, and they both transmit signals with AM with low modulation, like below 50%, which means that they never completely cancel each other out. In practice, this means if you can hear either of the stations, you get an accurate time reference, but hearing both does not ruin it. So going back to what you say, if you were monitoring 5.000 000 and 10.000 000 MHz, you could get two different DF bearings, both of which are valid.
@@BrightBlueJim I don't remember if I ever saw two Line of Bearings (LOB) on WWV. I remember hearing the male and female voices announcing what the time would be at the beep, indicating that I was hearing both Hawaii and Colorado stations.
The Colorado WWV station was alerted for a fix which was used as a calibration exercise. Calibration fixes on known transmitter sites was a daily or weekly exercise, I don't remember which. What usually occured was your DF site would have an LOB for which ever station had the strongest signal if I remember correctly. Also depending on the the variables of HF propagation, your DF site might only hear one WWV station and not the other. It has been 26 years since I worked HFDF.
One interesting phenomenon that I discovered was related to the Gray Line effect. When a European LOB would normally shoot in a North East direction, if the transmitting station was in the Gray Line and the DF site I was at was in the Gray Line, the LOB would go north.
@@RetiredRadioChaser In RDF, you take the receiver peaks vs. bearing, and it is entirely possible to have two peaks. When listening from two different locations, you have two bearings for each receiver site, with four intersection points, which are ambiguous, unless you have a way of knowing which bearing line corresponds to each transmitter. In the case of WWV and WWVH, the voice recordings are staggered so they do not step on each other, so this is pretty easy. I don't remember if this was always the case, but you can tell by looking at the specifications of each station's current hourly broadcast sequence that they are quite specifically designed not to interfere with each other. I don't know how their carrier phases are coordinated, but since the carriers are based on the reference clocks, and these are kept synchronized between the two stations, they are coherent at all times.
Great video Lewis and its so true about every piece radio jigsaw builds a picture
I connected my old tube receiver with iso power transformer to AC and the ant input to ground via an 8 ft copper rod. Got very interesting signals!
Another quality video Lewis always some thing new to know.
Another outstanding video!
Very enjoyable and interesting Lewis. I went past RAF Croughton once, massive HF log periodic in the grounds. Not sure it is there now.
Digital military transmissions on HF is something I find fascinating.
Its still there! Along with loads more. And a sister station in nearby Milton.
I continue to be amazed by the antennas. I had a bit of antenna theory in school.
I live very near to an HFGCS/HF and retired US Naval radio station. If you would like any footage and info I'd be glad to send it. Love the channel!
Would love to see some!
Nothing wrong with including a little Antenna Porn with your videos, Lewis!
My favorite is the Russian Woodpecker and its massive antenna array. Is it still transmitting from somewhere?
It was radar near Prityat' near Kiev in modern Ukraine. Modern Russian Voronezh systems are using different frequencies and don't make interference with short bands.
@@izoiva Thank you!
Fantastic stuff. I really makes you wonder what's out there.
3:33 sounds like an ARP Odyssey on extreme noise gen. sample and hold shyt
Those Russian stations sound great. I bet they could be sampled and used to create some seriously banging tunes. The first one actually reminded me of the auto-generated music on TempleOS
Numbers and other clandestine radio transmissions have always fascinated me.
Thanks for the great video (as always), Lewis!
Also, the antenna p0rn is always appreciated. 🤓😉
Thanks for sharing.
Indeed, as a ham radio (YO2MNE) I also had the curiosity of listening to some "strange numbers stations".
Did you noted down maybe a list with stations and frequencies?
73!
has there been a flurry of signals on the 5th November due to an unexpected vehicle flying around the British Isle at over 25000mph ?
I saw a UFO that night, east coast usa.
The red lightning bolt is the signature of The Andrew Corporation, based in Orland Park, Illinois. It used to be, anyways.
Some more really interesting content, something I hadn’t even thought about. Thank you.
I used to be able to pick something similar to the warbling tones at 3:24 somewhere above ~103MHz FM on an ordinary radio in the 80s.
If it was around 110Mhz then it was probably an aircraft navigation beacon (VOR or similar)
@@dasy2k1 That is a possibility
yes! I heard a nearly identical EAM on the west coast of the U.S. in summer of 2021..i wish i had logged the freq and time/date.
Very interesting! Thanks for this video. Great antenna footage and sound.
Those things are so powerful they make sound u can hear without speakers I can only imagine how much power goes through them to work like that 😳
Who remembers the Magdebird?
An East German numbers station broadcast from Magdeburg using a woman as broadcaster.
Apparently they open up blast doors where you can find a bunch of red crates. Happy lootin'
The forgotten frequency, node 9. London Tower. All of the towers, but only some have access as cold silence falls
The Australian Woodpecker sounds funky, I'm surprised there isn't didgeridoo music in the background.
Very interesting, Thanks Lewis !
I have an old Panasonic radio from the '70s with a shortwave band. How can I hear numbers stations with it? I've tried but so far, no luck.
Yes you can. But it's hard, especially in daytime.
@@izoiva How do I do it? Do I need to add another antenna?
JORN signals sound very similar to the opening notes of Hawkwind's "Silver Machine"
I think you will find that JORN did use Hawkwind's "Silver Machine" opening notes.
Hawkwind were well known for creating binary shift keying, they developed it on early synthesisers and radio hams loved it!
Hey at roughly 6:25 mark on the russian dishes, what are the marking on the dish from. Just curious. Is it nothing special?
this is scary. I just imagine an empty, or rather empty building, with nothing but this static being played from a tiny machine.
Then, quiet.
You have your finger on the pulse of clandestine transmissions! Amazing!
'Foxtrot'. I wonder if that would be used for f had that been developed in a different era, as it's only other meaning is a swing era American dance form.👍
Or maybe it's the other way around - the dance may have been named after something beginning with 'F'. No, probably not. There could have been many, many different words used for each letter, so if there wasn't such a dance, it could have just been "fox". Indeed, many people shorten "foxtrot" to "fox" anyway.
Thanks Lewis. Well done again.
Thanks Lewis
Loved seeing the 'Andrews' dishes (O: Where were those photos taken ? Thanks.
So much eerie weirdness. Motivated to start shopping for a receiver.
"OVERFLOW, more follows, stand by". "This is OVERFLOW, Out!"
That's so cool.
I saw a reply below mention "Russian Woodpecker." There is a 2015 documentary called "The Russian Woodpecker." I believe it can be found on Amazon or Netflix. I suggest watching it if anyone is interested in this stuff. It will blow your mind.
Do you not have a list of frequencies for these please and best time to hear them? Cheers!
The only thing I have that picks up shortwave is an old Sharp GF9090 boombox
7:20 I'm known to broadcast this exact "Jorn" signal from time to time.
JORN is a fascinating bit of kit, and by the sounds of it, a bit more interesting to listen to than the (not so) sorely missed Duga-3!
I partly remember seeing something that happened in America, they picked up a frequency through a plug socket in a house, I think it was called the Woodpecker.
Could these frequencies be some kind of phsy op that affect the mentality of the people.
Just asking g for a friend 😆
I don't understand why these sre still in use, especially with Internet being able to encrypt all 2way traffic, it seems odd to me...saying that, I do love this stuff...it's fascinating
Maybe it's our government messaging the mothership. Lol
"Skybird, this is the SAC Airborne Command Post with a test of the Primary Alerting System and morning wake up call...Acknowledge now"
I heard this one morning when I was on alert at a Titan II launch complex waiting on crew change over. It must have been the controller's last day on the Airborne...
Correction there are 4 variants of X06, not three. X06 (6 separate tones 213465), X06a (2 alternating tones 121212), X06b (2 or 3 tones 111666 or 112666), X06c (rising scale 123456) and X06d (single tone 111111 or 666666).
Does the Russian woodpecker still exist? I have been told that this was sone kind of radar. Is this correct?
It was over-the-horizon radar used by the Russians during the Cold War. It was a particular nuisance to radio amateurs like myself during the mid-80s.
Specifically it was the Duga radar - one of which was based next to and fed by the Chernobyl NPP. No longer active, however.
I've seen UA-cam videos of people climbing all over the Duga 2 antenna. Not even well guarded, much less active.
I’m curious to know what you do to minimize interference from electronic devices? I have trouble with that even at a house in the country with minimal electronics in it (I think b/c it has a smart meter installed in the loop)
There are some antenna arrays in some of those stock photos would be very nice to have for my ham radio setup. Thanks for the videos. I just discovered your UA-cam channel today. 11/03/22
You also just discovered UA-cam today?
@@stakkerhmnd ah yes... Another one that acts like Cee U Next Tuesday... They are always amusing...
Bit off topic but what type of aerial is at 3:51 in the video. There is a house near me with one on the chimney.
It’s a national air traffic receive site
Run. Run fast, run far. Do not ever return.
@@BrightBlueJim ?
@@JamesA42 Sorry, unexplainable panic attack after seeing alien-looking antennas.
@@BrightBlueJim it's a strange looking antenna that's for sure.
That first site looks like its at Culpeper Virginia USA...
I wonder, could you possibly put the name of the B-Roll we are watching in the upper right? I often find myself wondering what we are looking at (I know it's not related to the audio playing, that's not an issue 😅, just hoping to learn what the B-Roll is).
Very interesting, thank you! Why was Salford shown at the end in context with the Australian system?
Go back to 1 minute and listen to what I said….
It would be good if you could list frequencies and times to listen to get people started. 🙂 Excellent video
How did you get an uncensored sat pic of the E11 Warsaw sation? (I always think of it as E11 even tho it's the entire P11 family) if you put the coords into google maps now, that section is blured... tho you can still look around with street view lol
Cheers Lewis another Interesting video👍
Been listening to number stations since I was a kid, still fascinating
whats a good cheap radio for listening? like something that can do a lot more the a uv5r