Sixty-first edition of the N&O column / Spooks newsletter

(Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 12:30:04 +0200)

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Voice stations

E03 and E04

On request the schedules of the Lincolnshire Poacher and Cherry Ripe.

Lincolnshire Poacher (E03)

Cherry Ripe:

Al and Tomonori compiled the id's of LP and CR. Thanks guys!

Lincolnshire Poacher E03 - IDs as of May 1st, 2003

Lincolnshire Poacher E03 - IDs as of May 15th, 2003

Cherry Ripe E04 - IDs as of May 9th, 2003

Cherry Ripe E04 - IDs as of May 16th, 2003

Cherry Ripe E04 - IDs as of May 23rd, 2003

E10

Was it really an extremely quiet month, or did you guys forget to report your findings? I heard two "1" messages myself and "FDUM" was copied by Richard, but that is all.

Bob Swartz and JMM attempted to figure out what the story is behind the repeat messages. How often do they occur and when? They need a lot of detailed logs for further investigation and it would be nice if you could help them out so that we can look forward to the next N&O with new results.

Bob Swartz has been browsing thru his E10 logs looking for repeat sequences and tells us what he found.

"On 27 September 2002 the following was noted:

At 0225z on 5170 kHz a message was in progress, the repeat of text identified the message as 41/IZDKQ. The message ended with the standard end of message, end of transmission and VLB began to call.

At 0230 on 4360 kHz, CIO was calling and started sending message 41/TQNPA. This was repeated and ended with the standard closing.

At 0245z, CIO was calling on 4360 kHz and VLB was calling on 5170  kHz. VLB then began to repeat its previous message. A check of 4360  kHz showed that CIO was now repeating its message.

Interesting that both messages contained the same group count. Apparently, the station were repeating the sequence on a 15 minute interval. The message being sent and repeated and then the station calling until the xx00, xx15, xx30, xx45 time comes up. I wonder if this could be recorded and tested in the future to see if it is a standard procedure."

In a later e-mail, Bob says:

"I have been doing some monitoring of the E10 family and would like to share some stuff with you all.

• There appears to be some daily repeats of messages. ART repeats the same message at 0100z, 0200z, and 2200z. EZI repeats at 2000z and 2200z and at 0130z and 2130z. It is really difficult for me to get on my receiver between 2000z and 2200z. Is anyone interested in covering those skeds?

• Strange activity on 5435 kHz at 0200z, normally an rf for ART 17 April, ULX and ART calling together on 5435 kHz. After sorting it out, ULX stopped. ART noted sending 93/XTFFU msg on 5435 kHz and ULX sending msg on 5880 kHz. 29 April, ULX only on 5435 kHz, sent 20/JLFST msg. Not active on 4880 kHz. ART not heard. 30 Apr ART calling on 5435kHz, then into message. ULX on 4880 kHz sending 79/MANGP message. 1 May ULX calling on 5435. ART not heard.
  
  Anyone have anything else to contribute? Before anyone asks, no, I DO NOT have any recordings of any of this activity. Sorry.

• We do get some long running messages on E10 on occasion. That is, the same message is repeated at the same time every day (or at least it is there every time we look at it). Currently the longest one that I have observed is from EZI on the 2330z sked. Message 79/LRYYX was first heard 1 April 2003, observed last night 1 May. Not the longest runner, but the longest we have as of right now.

I would appreciate any responses, additional information on E10. Don't forget to send your logs in to the data base."

In response to Bob's report, JMM did some mumbo jumbo with the logs in the database and came up with the following:

"Now, time for some SQL wizardry with 'GROUP BY' tricks:

My DB has some 47722 logs, 16703 of them are E10 likes. It is mainly drawn from Smolinski's DB but with some extra correction (logs expressed in MHz removed when not able to correct them, typos corrected when noticed on time and asked to original submitters, logs in the future of their date of submitting due to confusion in date formats, etc...)

If I take apart logs the comments of which contains the following strings 'CIO2', 'MIW2', 'KPA2', 'SYN2', 'VLB2', there are 10838 records remaining mainly composed of regular H+00 and H+30 transmissions plus the E10As.

After having put all logs starting between H+01 and H+29 to H+00 and those starting between H+31 and H+59 to H+30, I grouped the comments and the resulting starting times

This gives 5203 distinct couples. I then do a selection retrieving record with identical comments and different starting times, and manually browse the results. Bingo!

So, as we can see, there are many apparent repeats. I say 'apparent' because this approach suffers some flaws.

• It relies on a consistent type of commenting a log
  For instance :
  One log by monitor A at 1230z 'EZI 62 ZAGXS' and the same tx at 1800 but with 'EZI 62 ZAGXS weak' will not be detected

• It is not exempt from input flaws; although it could be easy to determine with the number of occurrences from the original table.

Ok, so far so good. The existence of repeats has been verified. And we already have some leads to check.

For instance: "Are these repeats consistent over a long time, or do they appear for some time and then vanish? In the latter case, are repeats more frequents when there are string msgs?"

A more thorough analysis is needed. Maybe I will publish a fully detailed study on that topic if interest is shown."

Re Bob's questions in paragraph 3, JMM remarks: "From the top of my head, the longest ever running msg I can remember was 68 FSTYL on YHF. First log by John Maky, 2000-01-13 0230 7918 (id=18721). Last log by Gallus Galus, 2000-03-07 0230 7918 (id=21292). So it ran for at least 55 days. The previous log for YHF at this time slot with a different msg is from 1999-12-30 (id=18283), the following one dates from 2000-03-21. So, 68 FSTYL possibly ran from 1999-12-31 to 2000-03-20, i.e. for 80 days."

G01

While doing some research about Espionage during the Cold War, I stumbled over an interesting note about the French Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE).

The note says: "Other French clandestine radio stations run by the SDECE were sending personal coded messages to underground agents on the other side of the Iron Curtain. One such SDECE unit broadcast Tyrolian music on 6425 kHz between 1130 and 1140 AM from the Chartres region, but it ceased its activities in 1975 after an article was published in a French magazine specializing in radio matters, called Interferences"

The article concerned was published in the Autumn 1975 issue of the French magazine "Interferences". As far as I know the magazine does not exist anymore. It goes without saying that I am very interested in this article, so.... if anyone got a copy, please let me know.

I never believed the story that Radio Northsea International was involved in this "Tyrolian" station and this article supports my idea. Let's see if we can find more info.

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