Showing posts with label Wired magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wired magazine. Show all posts

Friday, September 30, 2011

Inside the Russian Short Wave Radio Enigma

By Peter Savodnik
From a lonely rusted tower in a forest north of Moscow, a mysterious shortwave radio station transmitted day and night. For at least the decade leading up to 1992, it broadcast almost nothing but beeps; after that, it switched to buzzes, generally between 21 and 34 per minute, each lasting roughly a second—a nasally foghorn blaring through a crackly ether. The signal was said to emanate from the grounds of a voyenni gorodok (mini military city) near the village of Povarovo, and very rarely, perhaps once every few weeks, the monotony was broken by a male voice reciting brief sequences of numbers and words, often strings of Russian names: “Anna, Nikolai, Ivan, Tatyana, Roman.” But the balance of the airtime was filled by a steady, almost maddening, series of inexplicable tones.

Additional story at Wired magazine link
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/ff_uvb76/all/1