Twenty-third edition of the N&O column / Spooks newsletter

(Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 22:43:06 +0100)

New Enigma designators | Voice stations | Morse & RTTY stations
Intelligence news | Logs
Index | NS NL Home

Morse & RTTY stations

Although there was quite a lot of morse stations info in last month's column, reactions, morse logs or related info failed to appear in my mailbox. Shame. So, it's again up to the two people who submit most of the morse info, Guy and Valeriano...

M01

There were no M01 end of month transmissions in January.

M08A

0300 UTC, 4027.5 kHz, frequency change

M10E

2100 This one has come up on the same frequency as last year, 6539, so it seems they have a yearly cycle of frequencies.

M13

There seems to be a major decline in this one. I have so far this month only heard 411.

M29

M29 was on Monday 31-1 at 0700 UTC on 5310 kHz and 0730 UTC on 5410 kHz, same as the week before but with a different message:
VDE 76 76 33 33 31 31 0800 0800.

Tuesday 1-2 on 0700 UTC on 5420 kHz and 0730 UTC on 5520 kHz with a different frequency to the week before but with the same message as Monday, despite it being a new Month. Same type of message with no figure 9 in it. Both repeat at 1300 and 1330 UTC.

M29 Tuesday Evening (1-2), not heard at 1800 UTC. 2000 UTC on 5130 kHz, same frequency as 1999. Message: VDE 76 76 25 25 1 1 1900 1900.

Costas dropped me a note that he heard M29 in December on two 4 MHz frequencies:

M51

In addition to the Spanish edition of M51's profile, Valeriano has put a map of Favières transmitter site on his home page.

M76

The long running message for 208 finally ended on 31 January. Guy reports that the transmission on 2 February at 1750 UTC was unusual. He says: "first time I have heard no messages sent."

Military stations

Artho, Jim, Alf, Tom and Erwinn proof that it's still great fun to listen to morse stations. If you do not understand morse why not learn it or use a decoder instead? If you can't/won't spend a lot of money on a decoder but you have a pc + soundcard, consider a shareware program for a soundcard. Maybe not the ultimate solution, but it is a start. Artho posted a lot of military stuff, most are from the Ukraine and Russian, while the unids are most probably from Poland and the Czech Republic. The new NATO countries normally use CET. As you can see the best reception here in Western Europe is in the late local evening / early night. Artho, Alf and Erwinn reported station 'SNJ3'. This is a very active station that is however still unid. Id's of all stations are most welcome, so please drop me a note if you have more info about these stations.

Note besides the SNJ3 item also the simultaneous transmission on 4603, 4607 and 4618 kHz of a numbers broadcast. Who? What? Where? Any ideas?

Tip: there are two distinctive differences between the Ukrainian and Russian stations:

• the time difference in the header of the messages
• the callsigns; the Ukrainians change their callsigns daily, the Russians don't

Ukraine

Russia

Eastern Europe (most likely Czech. Rep. and/or Poland)

Sample traffic.

Can someone id this station, or any of the others?

Unid station 'SNJ3'

Most of the SNJ3 info came from Alf and was forwarded by Tom. Erwann and Artho supplied the rest of the logs. Thanks guys!

SNJ3 operates on a number of frequencies and is quite active. The station's origin is still unknown but df's pinpoint the station in the southern part of Poland or the northern part of the Czech Rep. Two of the most active frequencies during the past weeks were 3381 kHz (night freq) and 5335 kHz (day freq). GNJK is often called by SNJ3. These tactical callsigns reappear on a regular basis.

Every now and then you can find SNJ3 radio checking with a quite a few other stations, often at 1948 UTC. A number of the others also do radio checks with each other which makes it a bit chaotic :-)

Here a sample:

An interesting note came from Alf. He noted a RTTY transmission on 5248 kHz that had the same signal strength and used the same key (364) as SNJ3 used that day. Could this be the same station??? The RTTY station transmitted with 50bd/425. The messages consisted of both 5-letter and 5-figure groups. ';' seems to be the equivalent of the morse character '=' ( -...- )

Sample messages:

FAPSI intercepts [M42]

New Enigma designators | Voice stations | Morse & RTTY stations
Intelligence news | Logs
Index | NS NL Home