Numbers Stations

Graham1973

Graham1973

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A YouTube series covering 'Numbers Stations' quasi-mysterious shortwave stations, which are widely suspected to be used by various intelligence agencies to contact agents in the field. This series is covering the stations one at a time. When they were more common (In the 1970 - 2000s) time period several were given catchy names by the people who discovered them.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf1aTRC7lAk


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzy9inhK6nc


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFrWLHPI3rk


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHDY0fAcZQY
 
The best look at these was Radio 4's 'Tracking the Lincolnshire Poacher' from 20 years ago. Nice and calm and no shouty bloke getting excited.

Why are so many YouTube productions ruined by terrible narration/presentation? These folk aren't amateurs, they should know better. Caaalm down, caaaalm down.

I had the Lincolnshire Poacher Number station intro as my ringtone for a while. When such things were new.

Chris
 
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From a different YouTube series on Numbers Stations, the story (as far as is known) of G03, aka 'The East German Gong Show' or 'Gongs & Chimes' an Nationalvolksarmee station which operated from at least the 1970s right up to the end of East Germany and who's final transmission is the stuff of legend. (
It's the drunken singing that can be heard at the end of the video.
)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dX31e9srzA
 
From the same channel as the last video, the only Numbers Station that has an official name, V13, 'New Star Broadcasting Station', a Taiwanese station that's still operating to this day...

Warning: Do not listen to with headphones, this station is heavily jammed and some of it is quite loud...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRh7DeSJAsQ
 
Here is a seven part series discussing the East German Morse to Speech machine that lay behind many of the Eastern Bloc numbers stations, including the Polish G02 'Swedish Rhapsody', East German, G03 'Gongs & Chimes' and the Cuban V02 'Attencione' stations. As can be seen, the 'voice' was changable depending on the user, just why the Poles made theirs sound like a young girl, is a mystery.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkc_Ig87TnM


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4buFLqjvTjA


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aZflTArP74


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGB_a9RwgJs


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOgXaT8q_-w


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MdZeyc4TaY


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocWASywcsAU
 
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martinbayer said:
I remember coming across one of those while listening to the radio in the evening as a German teenager - creepy...
Click to expand...

Must have been weird indeed. Back in my youth in a backward corner of south west France, we had talkie-walkies with my sister. We realized that we could catch truck drivers onboard radios chatting - never quite understood the how it worked, but it worked.
 
I remember listening to these stations at all hours of the day and night in western Washington state when I was a kid, if you could get past the woodpecker.
 
Archibald said:
martinbayer said:
I remember coming across one of those while listening to the radio in the evening as a German teenager - creepy...
Click to expand...

Must have been weird indeed. Back in my youth in a backward corner of south west France, we had talkie-walkies with my sister. We realized that we could catch truck drivers onboard radios chatting - never quite understood the how it worked, but it worked.
Click to expand...
With the caveat of me being a classical mechanical heritage aerospace engineer that draws a hard line at all things electrical/electronic/programming/software/dancing electrons/etc., I do believe that the station I came across was on the AM spectrum.
 
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martinbayer said:
I remember coming across one of those while listening to the radio in the evening as a German teenager - creepy...
Click to expand...
Same here, only in Belgium. My friend was trying to catch Russian radio stations, and all of a sudden we came across a woman reading out numbers in German. This was in the 80s, long before the internet and with the Soviet Union still going strong. One of the spookiest experiences of my life.
 
Why are number stations just the purview of amateurs, and never fully discussed in any serious historical literature on Cold War spies?
 
sat_dxer said:
Why are number stations just the purview of amateurs, and never fully discussed in any serious historical literature on Cold War spies?
Click to expand...
Perhaps because there's just not much to say. Everybody knows they're there, everybody knows *in* *general* what they're for, nobody can crack the codes.
 
sat_dxer said:
Why are number stations just the purview of amateurs, and never fully discussed in any serious historical literature on Cold War spies?
Click to expand...

They are. The Soviets reused pads in the 50s which led to the codes being broken for a time. Lots of agents were caught with pads. The CIA used them for their agents in Soviet union. The information is there but there's not much else to say other than that was the means of communication.
 
Unfortunately "Number stations" being the purview of amateurs, makes it more of a study in Ufology.
 
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I'm not sure why you're repeating stuff back to me like I don't know it...since I referenced it.

It's like I told you- the stations are important to the sending of a message decoded with a pad. That's all there is to it. It is simply a means of communication, nothing more nothing less. There's not much to say on them.
 

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