[Spooks] Fwd: Odd station

[L.T. Easterly]

Steve --

After listening to the recording, I think it might easily be a test
broadcast, for whatever reason, "mimicking" a numbers station.

It might be clandestine or classified in nature, but  I like my hoaxes to
work a little harder than what I heard in the recording...

However it occurs to me that it might be a Yosemite Sam variant.
(Technicians setting up a station for other classified use, creating a
one-off recording that's distinct enough to recognize and measure power,
etc) -- sort of an impromptu "test beacon".

I can't make a lot out, but "UNO" seems to be repeated excessively, possibly
because its distinct enough to recognize if you're listening for it,
specifically under weak conditions.

I would think a "real" numbers station would attempt better enunciation of
the numbers. I've heard some pretty awful hum and disruptive engineering
with V2 but never quite that bad ;-)

>From what I can gather, true Enigma stations are heard by multiple regions
and multiple parties before they're called true spynumbers stations, I think
a level of consistency is expected, before they get classified as true spy
numbers stations.

Anyway -- for validating a spy numbers catch on your own:

Spynumbers.com has a pretty serious wealth of current schedules, loggings
and  soundbites  of known broadcast regions. I don't have a link handy, but
you can also google for the CONET project which now has a lovely
archive.orgrepository of most of the historically known numbers
stations, even those
now retired.

I wouldn't be ready to call the broadcast a hoax, per se, because I don't
think it was attempting to fool anyone. I think it was likely trying to
blend in with myriad other weirdness on HF ;)

I would stress here that the operator will likely never confirm nor deny,
nor do actual number stations, and my thoughts here are pure conjecture. :)

Either way, Keith, this was a pretty cool catch!

-- corq



On Sep 26, 2011 9:17 AM, "Steve" <steve at darkfibers.net> wrote: