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

(Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2003 23:24:06 +0200)

Voice stations | Morse stations | Various modes
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Morse stations

MX

A quick roundup of the reported cluster beacons:

In addition to the above a couple of others were heard:

An interesting note reached me from Franta in Central Europe. He writes that he can hear beacons "L" and "M" on an almost daily basis but not from the usual locations.

"L" in St.Petersburg moved a bit and is now on 3336.1 with its typical chirpy sound. Franta sent me a recording of the "L" marker that he is hearing on 4069.6 kHz. It is different from the St.Petersburg marker; a clear and clean signal and...... it's coming from the south! So far the location is still a mystery. 4069.6 kHz is a daytime frequency. The nighttime frequency is yet unknown -if there is any.

Now for the second one; "M" in the frequency slot of Magadan, 16332.4 kHz, but louder than Magadan normally is and it looks like the signal is coming from the Arkhangelsk area. Hmmm, I wonder what this is.

M13

John comments on a M13d transmission that he copied on 5876 kHz on Saturday 12 March at 0330 UTC: "303(R5) = 276 54 ="

In his own words:

"I was on freq about 15 min before sked time and was getting lots of QRM from a broadcast station on 5875. I think it was Radio Moscow but I'll have to check into it. It was a European station though.

I heard M13 tuning up on 5876 at about 0324 with series of random dots & dashes. His signal was pretty good (S8-9) and I could notch out the broadcast station station pretty well.

What I noticed and thought was very strange was, that at 0329 and about 30 sec, the broadcast station went off the air in the middle of the show, just like someone pulled the plug. There was no normal sign-off procedure like what freqs they were staying up on etc. The BC station was playing some rock music and the freq just went dead in the middle.....

This is the first time I've run into this and wondered if you had any idea if there may be a relation between M13 and the BC station. Any idea of where M13 originates???

Maybe the broadcast station station is a marker for M13's outstation to zero beat and then the outstation just turns on the BFO when the broadcast station drops the carrier and bingo..... there's M13. A slick little procedure so the outstation doesn't miss any skeds by tuning around randomly???

Call me suspicious, but its just a thought. Maybe its just me..."

Thanks, John. Comments anyone???

M18

M18 was active on 3803 kHz sending the time in UTC+3 (Moscow time).

Laurent logged a similar station but this one sends the time as UTC+8 on 4073 kHz. Could this be a sister station in the eastern part of Russia? The clock apparently needs new batteries as the time difference increased to UTC + 8 hours and 7 minutes on 14 March. The funny thing is that Laurent also heard transmissions of UTC+3 on 4073 kHz on 15 March. Maybe my new batteries joke isn't that bad. Maybe the device was malfunctioning after all. Logs are most welcome, folks!

M21 PVO

The stations were heard on the following frequencies: 3314//4391, 4418, 5131, 5260.5, 5765, 6321.5 and 7994 kHz.

PVO update:

I published a profile of the Russian Protivo Vozdushnoy Oborony (PVO) in N&O #53. In that article I explained what the messages mean. Part of the info appears to be incorrect. Thanks to one of our members I can now give you a better explanation.

It concerns the part "Now the modern 15-character messages. The samples were all logged during the past year. The main difference is that they don't start with =00 anymore. Also missing is the code for "friend or foe". The codes for the tracking station (2 digits), track code (3 digits), grid (7 digits), and the time (2 digits, minutes only) are still there. The altitude also does not appear anymore in the morse version, but can still be heard on the voice channels."

So, how should it be read? As you can see in the following explanation, all the assumed missing information is still there.

The messages look like this when sent by the PVO stations:

=13209813134224
=13209813436625
=13641176513420
=23643901070030
=4320902245??29
=10117115618152
=4135113514????
=10478541048146
=20207501100908"

The following is how it should be logged:

= 1 3209 8131342 24
= 1 2641 1765134 20
= 2 3643 901 07 00 30
= 1 0117 1156181 52
= 4 1351 1351 4
= 1 0478 5410481 46
= 2 0207 501 10 09 08

The figures 1,2,4 etc are codes which reflect the info.

Similarly 501 is 1 aircraft of type/ident 5 (5 = scheduled airliner) 10 is height. 09 is speed and 08 is bearing from radar station.

4 1351 1351 4 = Track dropped on track number 1351.

Idents:

On the older format 511 was speed and 510 was height. 190 was track lost. 192 was tracked dropped.

A final note re the grid figures (see the JPG file that accompanied N&O #53). The "Major" part is always the first two figures of the grid.

Example: 00 1234 5678294 21 80 1645

M21 variants

Fritz Nusser sent me a number of sample messages of M21 variants. As far as I know these messages are not Russian but originate from various ex-Warszaw Pact countries or ex-Soviet republics. Because of their common past, a number of countries in Central Europe are using systems similar to the Russian PVO system. The problem with the used format is the time. Only the minutes are part of the message, so you cannot see in what time zone they are.

• Variant 1: 5210,5 kHz

9910449815600 9911249815800 9912249815800 9913249814700
9914249814600 9915249814800 9916249813600 9917249814400
9918249814300 9921249818300 9906249069300 9908249825956
9908249018856 9907241763356 9907241763958 9909249018358
9908249017258 9906249069958 9906249068400 9908249014102
9920245897802 9911245897802 9912245897802 9913249814502
9914249814502 9915249814402 9916249811802 9917245891802
9918245891902 9918245088900 9910245088900 9919245099702
9920245089802 9921249814702 9922249814702 9923249815202
9923249814602 9922249815102 9923249814602 9922249815104
9921249814704 9916249814104 9917249814304 9915245898004
9914245898904 9912245897404 9911245897404 9910245897404
9920245099904 9909249814304 9908249814104

• 5125,5 kHz

9600248507517 9601248564617 9602875983617 96636000000
9606245875817 9607245063117 9600248565119 9600248569919
9602874592219 9603874596519 9604874519119 9605874518519
9606245865419 9607245064419 9600248564719 9600248564719
9602874687819 9603874095221 9606245867521

Notes:

Sometimes QTCs and XXX msgs; no time stamps; time even or odd; no identifier; sometimes messages are preceded by a prefix.

The messages unraveled:

• Variant 2: 5366,5 kHz

8703242592424 8706242533124 8705241.95124 8706242862424
8708242846224 8709242042324 8710242899724 4871087104
8703242599226 4870387034 8704242523826 4870487044
870524258.826 8706242863726 8708242548826 8709242042926
8705242596728 4870587052 870824284.828 8705242042628
8708242897730 8709242046.30 4870987094

Notes:
5366,5 kHz. Callsign: 4SCH. Heard on 6 February. Not copied since.
Sometimes messages start with prefix "4"; no time stamps; time even;
no QTCs heard so far.

The messages unraveled:

• Variant 3: 7804.5 kHz, heard in December 1998

6861037295315 6862037..... 6863037287515 6864037381415
6865037392915511800 6866037391415 6861037267317 6862037294417
6863037287117 6864037381817510900 ar ar ar ar ar

• Variant 4: 7689 kHz, heard in December 1998

2861037..." etc

M87

Igor reports M87 on 7940 kHz at 0000 UTC on March, 17.

684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 000 000
684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 000 000
684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 000 000
684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 000 000
684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684
684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 684 000 000

Voice stations | Morse stations | Various modes
Military stations | Intelligence news
Agency profile :Libya | Logs
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