ENIGMA 2000 Newsletter - Issue 35

July 2006
Articles, newsreports and Items of interest :enigma2000-owner@yahoogroups.com

Voice stations | Oddities | Polytones
German branch | Numbers predictions
E03 & E03a prediction charts | E06 & S06 schedules
Cubans schedules | Cuban traffic analysis
G06 schedules over a year | Family III chart
If it had not been for 15 minutes (4/6) | Numerals | Jimmy | WWII Czechoslovak military radio stations
HJH's watch | News Items | Web sites | Contribution deadlines
Index | E2K NL Home

Traffic analysis of the Cuban stations

By Mark Slaten

Before we proceed to the V02 Cuban Stations log this excellent tutorial:

In the process of searching for and copying the “numbers stations”, I have noticed that many members of our group, do not always include the callups and other pertinent information to their logs. I can only assume that they do not understand how this seemingly useless information, really is of some use, as the group tries to build up a larger picture of the various “numbers” families. For some reason, many monitors fail to include this information in their logs. They seem to be satisfied that they can chalk up a catch of the “Spanish Lady sending 5-digit groups of numbers” or “CW cut numbers being sent on a Cuban frequency”. A lot of times they will include in the Spooks database an Enigma identification of V2 or M8, instead of the correct Enigma of V2a or M8a. In the recent past, V2c and M8c were also valid Cuban variants and were given those Enigma ID’s to separate them from the standard V2a and M8a stations. V2 and M8 were valid at one time, but since 1996 they have not been heard. If you think this is picky, well just think of what you are going to get if you do a search of the database for V2a or M8a and you use V2 or M8 as the criteria. You are going to get very old records, or not the valid V2a and M8a records which are most recent. If correct information is not input to the database, how will we obtain reliable results when we do a search?

Sharing with the rest of the group all the information we can from our observations assists others in the hobby. Behind the scenes, there are many tireless individuals that give freely of their time in building prediction charts, searchable databases, “Numbers” profile lists. All of this available to us for assistance in helping us to identify the stations.

The “Enigma2000 Newsletter” is quite an achievement by a very few dedicated hobbyists, that is a wealth of knowledge about past and present “Numbers” stations. The latest logs and worldwide intelligence information. All this information is there for your pleasure.

The latest issue #33 was 72 pages in length!

The “Spooks Newsletter” and “Spooks Database” are also freely there for your use. The database is most helpful. In addition to logging your catches, you can search the database. But again, accuracy is vital if it is to be a valuable tool for all to use.

Use these to further your knowledge and enjoyment of this hobby, and make sure you contribute to the groups all you can. If you feel you are not equipped at this time to contribute because of your lack of knowledge, this group will not hesitate to answer some of your questions if you can’t find it readily available. Remember that no question is silly or dumb. We all started from nothing and gained knowledge from practice, asking questions and listening to others.

Now our group probably will never crack the encrypted messages that are sent over the airwaves by the various “numbers” families. That is the job of governments. Instead, we as a group enjoy the hunt for the different voice, morse and maybe even the high speed electronic signals that crisscross the global ether, every hour of every day. To the uninitiated, this does not make much sense. Just a bunch of females reading endless strings of numbers, or the dreaded CW (morse) signals or other weird bells and whistles throughout the shortwave bands.

But we as a group can begin to understand how the various networks operate, just by observing and noting some simple operating procedures in our logs. Eventually, a picture can be built of how the networks operate, when they can be found and possibly what callups will be used or what days they operate. And all of this without even being able to read one of those mysterious messages that are sent.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I will use the Cuban V2a and M8a networks as examples. Believe it or not, there is a semblance of order to the Cuban networks. As there is also an order to all of the the other “numbers” stations. Sometimes we can hear up to five or more different Cuban stations on air at once. Some are voice (V2a), and some of them are morse (M8a). But which of these stations are related to each other on a day to day and hour to hour basis?

The easiest way to determine this is to simply copy down and log the callups that are sent by the stations. Now perhaps English, French or German is your native tongue and you do not speak Spanish. Or maybe you haven’t the slightest idea of what the morse characters are. Well, not to worry. We are really just talking about a very few characters that we need to learn. Basically, the ten numbers 0-9 and possibly a very few words like “attentcion for attention” and “finale for final or end of broadcast”. It is the same for morse. The Cubans send slow enough, that this should be an easy challenge for most to achieve. The voice and morse equivalents can be found in various downloads and FAQ’s on the “numbers” sites. Write down a crib sheet and keep it next to your receiver to refer to, along with a pad of paper and pencil.

Now let us get to the main point of this tutorial about the callups, and how they can be used to analyse a station.

The callups that the Cubans send are composed of five numbers. The last number of a callup seems to increment by one, on a day-to-day basis. This increment is usually for three days, but occasionally it can be more, or less, as you will see below. This is important to know in determining whether a schedule is daily, or Monday-Wednesday-Friday, or Monday through Friday, or just once a week.

The first four numbers of the callup are unknown in meaning to me at this time. They could be some sort of message discriminant, designation or name of the addressee or something else.

The Cuban voice and morse stations use the same formats for their transmissions. They send:

1. Three callups for 3 minutes on the hour.
2. Then the first callup 5 times before sending a 150 group message.
3. Then the second callup 5 times before sending a 150 group message.
4. Then the third callup 5 times before sending a 150 group message.
5. Then a sign-off to end the broadcast.

The whole transmission will be repeated once more the following hour with the same callups and messages. More than likely the second broadcast will be on another frequency. So how do we know which is a stations’ first (or primary) broadcast and which is the second (or secondary) broadcast?

Why, by the callups that are sent! A wealth of knowledge can be gleaned just from this seemingly insignificant detail.

So by copying the callups and identifying which sked is a repeat of the other, we can determine how the skeds are related and also build up the weekly schedule for that particular station. This includes the time and the frequencies used.

I will now give some examples and attempt to show the process.

Several weeks ago, one of the monitors posted on the lists that he had noticed Cuban morse and voice activity just about everyday at 1200z and 1300z. He had included a few frequencies and times and commented that he hoped that these would be of interest to the group. I read this and kept it in the back of my mind. I couldn’t act on it personally because these are hours that I work for a living. Well, as fate would have it, I had an accident at work on February 8 and broke my left ankle in two places. After some surgery, the doctor has me at home in a cast for about three months. When I felt I could move around on a walker confidently a few days later, I pulled out the note referred to above and thought I would see what I could do with it since I now had the time.

Note: That the following example station has evolved from broadcasting in the Morse M8a format to changing to the Spanish Lady V2a format. You can see this in the short history below, which covers the time frame of the last four days of February and all of March and April, 2006:

Also of interest is how the incrementing went past the normal three times on three separate occasions. They were March 15-18, April 1-6 and April 22-25. They only occurred with the first callup.

I hope this endeavor will be useful to the readers of this list. It hopefully will give inspiration and more attention to detail of the Cuban stations and all other number station families. The principle’s can be applied to all. With careful attention to your logs, you should be able to come up with more detail than even I show here. And remember, you haven’t broken the encryption on one message! And it is highly unlikely any of us ever will. But we can learn things about the stations, and have the satisfaction of being able to share it with the group.

73’s

Mark

[Excellent stuff Mark – thanks for sharing]

Voice stations | Oddities | Polytones
German branch | Numbers predictions
E03 & E03a prediction charts | E06 & S06 schedules
Cubans schedules | Cuban traffic analysis
G06 schedules over a year | Family III chart
If it had not been for 15 minutes (4/6) | Numerals | Jimmy | WWII Czechoslovak military radio stations
HJH's watch | News Items | Web sites | Contribution deadlines
Index | E2K NL Home