Thirty-eighth edition of the N&O column / Spooks newsletter

(Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 23:24:57 +0200)

Station news

The first e-mail comes from the Ukraine. Sergey informs us about a CIS military station on 5040 kHz, working with stations as: Gusar 55, Gusar 53, Gusar 44, Gusar 26, Gusar 03, Gusar 35, Gusar 76, Gusar 17.

Russian man 7019

Our next guests are from Japan. Regular contributor Takahsi noted a female operator with phone patches in Russian on 7019 kHz. The Russian Man numbers station on this frequency (Thu at 1104) can be heard regularly with heavy QRM from ham CWs, he says.

M82 - BML

North Korean station BML can occasionally be heard on 4700 kHz at H+00 at East Asian midnight. This frequency has been used by North Korean Intelligence for decades. <Takashi Yamaguchi>

M21

Russian Air Defense station M21 was very active on 4560 and 6330 kHz this month.

M18

Still active, now on 4073. The station possibly transmits from Eastern Russia as it is currently only heard in Asia.

South Korean stations

Takushi Ochiai, a very active Japanese SWL, says that « the presumed South Korean female numbers in AM, without ENIGMA code, are still very active during the East Asian, using 6215 kHz etc for personal communication. »

M40

Hideharu Torii, a member of the Asian Broadcasting Institute in Japan, says on his BBS: « M40, the North Korean CW numbers, is still on but its activities are going down. »

M29 / G04

When writing this on 25 June, no-one seems to have heard G04 this month. It's counterpart M29 was on the air on Tuesday at 0600 at 6560 and 0630 at 6660 kHz.

See also Newsletter 39 for G04, and Newsletter 40 for M29.

FAPSI [X06 / M42]

Kai logged a bunch 'mazielka' calls. FAPSI's selcal system was noted on 5232, 6892, 8027, 8085, 9102 and 11545 kHz.

XF - Faders

Leif checks in with news about the digital US military stations in Europe. He says: « It looks like the US-MIL has dropped their various nets in Italy, Germany and North Western Europe using the robust anti-multi path modem (also known by Enigma members as "Faders"). All of their known freqs have been silent for the last weeks. Either they have received new equipment or they have moved to either means of communication »

Unid CW

Igor found a new CW station 'X2M'. Probably military and in itself not so special, but... the times used by the station are very odd. The time used is either UTC+19. Are they fake, or could the time indicate a period of validity of the messages; or...? Ideas anyone???

Frequency	:	8398 kHz
Callsign	:	X2M
Mode	:	very fast morse
Timeused	:	UTC+19
Characteristics	:	callup: 'cq cq cq de x2m x2m vvv' (2 minutes) 'msg msg ch ch'; header consists of message nr sent twice, followed by 'ck100', time, date, '=' into 5 figure messages; ends with 'ar'.

Examples:

(logged on 11 June, 1203 UTC)

cq cq cq e x2m x2m vvv
cq cq cq e x2m x2m vvv
cq cq cq e x2m x2m vvv
msg msg ch ch
msg ch

nr03 nr03 ck100 ck100 time0701 time0701 date1206 date1206 =
35109 57381 79563... 54632 95762 48902 ar

nr04 nr04 ck100 ck100 time0706 time0706 date1206 date1206 =
90718 68731 56732... 05164 97143 08246 ar

(logged on 12 June, 1209 UTC)

nr21 nr21 ck100 ck100 time0707 time0707 date1306 date1306 =
04951 01298 16059... 30241 89106 70815 ar