Major Uptick in Russian Number Station Activity

The Spectrum Monitor e-zine columnist Mike Chace Ortiz is reporting this morning a major uptick in Russian spy number station activity.

Mike wrote, " I’ve heard every imaginable Russian Intel mode in a couple of hours listening today. OFDM, CW, Voice, 200bd/500 Baudot and probably more I’ve missed. A massive uptick in activity.
The “English Man” and "Russian Man" I rarely hear these days and they are S9+ all over. Both CW and voice transmissions are repeating traffic for the same agents and on the same headers. Everything heard this morning is coming from Moscow but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Cuba-based TXs are up later in the day."

The Stupidly Simple Spy Messages No Computer Could Decode

Shane Harris on The Daily Beast has written an new article on HF numbers stations.

UDXF expert Ary Boender was interviewed recently and the result can be found on the website of the Daily Beast. It’s about numbers stations of course.

You can read the article at The Stupidly Simple Spy Messages No Computer Could Decode

Spy 'Number Stations' Still Baffle, Enthrall

By Christopher Friesen

In the early 1990s, at the end of the Cold War and before the onset of the Internet Age, you could tune across the shortwave bands and hear the monotonous drone of an automated woman’s voice calling out long strings of numbers in Spanish. “Siete — Quatro — Cinqo — Cinqo — Cinqo,” the voice would say, pause, and then switch to a new set of numbers.
These transmissions, which had started at the end of the Second World War, weren’t always in Spanish, nor were they always female. Other languages were used to broadcast entire strings of numbers, which many believed made up a coded message that could be heard by anyone with a shortwave radio. The consensus view at the time was they were meant for secret agents operating in foreign countries.
“We don’t know for sure what types of agents these messages are being sent to,” veteran numbers monitor Chris Smolinski told Radio World via email. ”We also don’t know for sure how the messages are encoded, although we have some theories.”
- See more at: http://www.radioworld.com/article/spy-%E2%80%98numbers-stations%E2%80%99-still-baffle-enthrall/223402#sthash.qDSPQrZv.dpuf