[Spooks] New question on NS

[Charles Bennett]

I've been lurking on the list for awhile but haven't really had anything to contribute.

In the mid 70s I was, occasionally, what you guys refer to as a numbers station.    Not the kind that operates for months or years but the kind that pops up, runs for a week or two, and then stops.   I was working with 10th special forces in bad toelz Germany sending encrypted messages to teams In the field.  5 letter code groups, broadcast at particular times.   Sometimes it would be the same transmission for a day, sometimes it would change often.   I was at a remote station with a secure teletype and the messages would arrive pre encrypted so I did not know the contents.  I would then rebroadcast them in morse.

Sometimes I would work the receiving end using high speed tape recorders.   The teams would send encoded messages using a gra~71 encoder so even though it was morse code it was sent as a very high speed burst.   We would record that then slow the tapes way down on playback and create hard copies of the messages.   Again we never saw the unencrypted messages when we were receiving, just the 5 letter code groups.

Just that you all might like that bit of trivia.

Best

Chuck
WB8CEE

Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 17, 2014, at 5:17 PM, Gian Romani <romanigian at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Visit http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/spooks to unsubscribe from this list
> 
> Thank you Todd!
> ciao
> 
> 
> 2014-03-17 19:51 GMT+01:00 Todd Dokey <justcallmebuddy at gmail.com>:
> 
>> Visit http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/spooks to unsubscribe from
>> this list
>> 
>> Dividing numbers into 4 or 5 number groups is done for the same reason
>> phone numbers get split up into groups -so you can remember the
>> string.
>> 
>> Its a cognitive science thing.
>> 
>> --
>> Semper Reluctor
>> 
>> "Liberty is the right to choose, freedom is the result of that choice."
>> ______________________________________________________________
>> Spooks mailing list
>> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/spooks
>> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>> Post: mailto:Spooks at mailman.qth.net
>> 
>> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> ______________________________________________________________
> Spooks mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/spooks
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:Spooks at mailman.qth.net
> 
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html