[CTSARA] Inside the Russian Short Wave Radio Enigma

[Andrew Rosca]

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/ff_uvb76/

*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.