Fifty-fifth edition of the N&O column / Spooks newsletter

(Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 22:59:28 +0100)

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Various modes

S28 - Buzzer

Jan Michalski checks in with some "Buzzer" notes. He says:

"24 and 25 October were the darkest days in the history of UVB-76. The station was silent for 3 hours and 42 minutes:

• October 24, 07:32-07:57 UTC No oscillator, only carrier

• October 25, 01:17-03:34 UTC No oscillator, only carrier

• October 25, 06:00-06:50 UTC No carrier

During the pauses, a Morse keying was clearly audible in the background of unmodulated carrier of UVB-76, meaning that a CW transmitter is located at the same site."

Jan updated his website about this station and added a Russian page as well. Here are the URLs:

• http://www.geocities.com/uvb76
• http://www.geocities.com/uvb76/uvb76.html

S30 - Pip

"The Pip is on its winter schedule now", writes Rimantas, and he also mentions the control message that he copied on 16 November at 1355 UTC on 5448 kHz.

The translated control message of 16 November:

"For 928, 650, 591, 724, 011, 064, 969, 920, 007, 112. How can you read me? Over"

007??? Is James Bond working for Russia these days? :-)

XM - Whales

The Whales a.k.a. Backward Music station is still on 5435 kHz and Gert also found one 9004.5 kHz (1100 UTC, 17 Nov.)

XTB

XTB is a new ENIGMA designator. It's characteristics are as follows:

Frequency 11116 kHz. Daily. It is best heard in Europe in the early morning. I transmits 1 tone, 2 buzzes.

X06 / M42

Jochen copied the Mazielka on 16 November at 1600 UTC. After the selcal, the CW callup to "URO" started on the same frequency, 13987 kHz, followed by a M42 RTTY transmission. The id for this link is 60047.

An oldie was heard by Richard Deasington: "RAU" on 13888 kHz at 0700 UTC on 6 November "RAU" is one of the survivors from the early 1990's and has link id 00070. Welcome back, Richard!

Other logs come from Bob, Leif, Peter and Richard.

XP

November schedules:

XSL

Takashi reports that XSL, the slot machine, can be heard on 4154, 4233, 4293, 6250, 6417, 6445, 8313, 8588 and 8703.5 kHz.

Jammers

Beside the usual bunch of -mainly- Iraqi and Iranian jammers between 7000 and 7080 kHz, the following other frequencies were reportedly being jammed: 1053 (N.Korea), 1557 (Iraq), 6030 (Cuba), 6600 (S.Korea), 7315 (Cuba), 7365 (Cuba), 8696, 8700 (Cuba), 9565 (Cuba), 9955 (Cuba), 11550 (China) kHz.

The BBC is also a victim:

"The BBC confirmed jamming on three separate shortwave frequencies when it followed up unconfirmed reports with field tests in Uzbekistan over the last few weeks. The jamming, which began on 1 September, consists of a strong radio signal from a Chinese speech station on the three frequencies used by the BBC during broadcasts."

[source: BBC press release, via CRW]

The following is a quote from Clandestine Radio Watch 120, written by D. Mezin:

"Recently, many DX listeners and stations' officials (such as people from VOA and BBC) discussed the continued jamming of Uzbek language broadcasting by Chinese authorities. They presume that Uzbek language can be easily understood by Uighur people, which is a national minority in Western China. Then, Uzbek broadcasts from Western radios may disturb stability in that region of China, they say. Well, but I still wonder: Kazakh and Kyrhgyz languages are understandable for Uighurs as well. To my ear, Kazakh is even more close to Uighur than Uzbek is. But those languages are not subject to jamming at all.

I do not exclude the possibility that initiative of jamming comes from Uzbekistan government. Possibly they have no technical possibility to do this, so maybe some agreement with Chinese authorities has been established. Regarding possible FM relaying in Tashkent, UZB capital (is it really carried out?), they may keep a good play for Western diplomatic missions, to show that "we do not violate the information freedom". Remember, Eastern rulers are very sly..."

Chirp sounders

A posting from Peter Martinez to the "ukfivemegs" group attracted my attention. Peter writes that he has found a new chirp sounder on 5400 kHz.

He has located the sounder with the help of Chirpview observations from PA1ARE and G4JNT at 49N 2W in Northwest France. It's been on since 20 November but there's no way of knowing if it's a new permanent sounder or a temporary one. It sweeps through 5.4 MHz at 1 min 44 sec past the hour and every 5 minutes thereafter.

Other chirp sounders can be heard on 5337.37 kHz. The following logs are from Richard with comments from Peter.

Chirp Beacons G3CWI Statistics:

Note that several of the monitors have been copying the Alice Springs and Canberra sounders on 5 MHz at about 1500z in the last few weeks. The USA sounders are audible all night at the moment (26 Nov). The sounders that drift in timing are sometimes logged twice with this system if the signal drops out and comes back in again later.

[source: Peter Martinez, via the "ukfivemegs" mailing list]

DOPE

Nope, not that dope :-) DOPE stands for the "Doppler Pulsation Experiment". The experiment is carried out by the University of Leicester.

Tom asked the university for a QSL card and received some interesting info from them together with a QSL letter.

Presently, a Leicester built HF Doppler transmitter and receiver system is situated in the vicinity of the EISCAT radar site near Tromso (69 N, 19 E). It continuously sounds the ionosphere on a near vertical path, with a CW signal at 4450 kHz. The system is controlled, in real time, by a PC running specially written control and logging software. The sounder avails the opportunity to observe perturbations on, and also many wave types through, the local ionosphere. It will be difficult to spot, as it is only on from time to time, and varies in frequency, often somewhere between 4 and 4.5 MHz, pulsing on and off at about 1 min intervals.

DOPE sounders transmit currently on:

They transmit extreme stable CW carriers. The output is 40 Watts. DOPE's receiver location is at Ramfjordmoen.

"The small frequency changes imposed on the signals during their reflection from the ionosphere at about 300 km altitude are analysed to provide information on low frequency waves in the Earth's magnetoshere"
explains Tim Yeoman.

You may try your luck for a QSL at the following address:

Thanks for the info, Tom.

For those who are interested in sounders I have a PDF document about DOPE. It is a copy of the relevant pages of the Journal of Geographical Research, vol.105, no.A3. Mail me if you want a copy (+/- 2,5MB).

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