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

(Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 22:23:33 +0200)

Unid stations

Oral Morse

Remember the oral morse station that Igor reported? When Don Schimmel read these logs he told me that he heard oral morse before. Don writes the following in his latest "Radio Intrigue":

"ORAL MORSE CODE - Recently I noted a WUN monitor item which described an activity sending the message by speaking the dits and dahs of Morse code. This caused my memory cells to kick in and in searching through some old file material, I found material which had been copied in the 80s.

The communications were between the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington DC and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in Addis Ababa. The Embassy used the assigned callsign of KNY44 but in addition sometimes used NDL as his callsign. The MFA used ADL as his callsign. FTK and WSL were also noted as callsigns on the frequency but they were unidentified. The Embassy operator had an absolutely horrible fist and evidently was broken frequently by Addis to request repeats. I have to point out that the Morse code the Embassy operator sent in the voice mode was a vast improvement and completely readable as opposed to his hand sending."

Thanks for the note, Don and keep up the good work.

The URL for Don's "Radio Intrigue" columns is:
http://www.dxing.com/intrigue.htm

DTMF

Manolis reports the so far unid DTMF station again. This station was first heard on 14 April 2002 on 8237 kHz. I have put a sample on the N&O website.

Manolis copied the station on 16396 kHz USB at 1332 UTC on 24 August. The transmission ended at 1336 UTC. He also heard it on 4095 kHz USB on Monday 20 January at 2008 UTC.

14104 kHz

0508 UTC

15 July

Unid station with 5LGs in Morse.

Unid Chinese station

Robin Harwood copied an unid Chinese station. So far we're no sure if it belongs to the same family as "Beijing" and "Guangzhou".

The Chinese Lady seems to have a regular schedule on 5924 kHz LSB from about 1200 UTC. S/off varies between 1220 and 1240 UTC.

After hearing his Encarta language samples and sound samples of various Chinese stations and New Star, Robin writes: "The numbers station broadcasting on LSB on 5924 at 1220 is definitely in Mandarin Chinese after comparing it with my Encarta language samples. Sur is the number 4. Liaow is 6. Ba is 8. I think it may be Taiwanese after comparing with the N&O webpage but it isn't // with Star Star on 8300."

Igor suggests that it might be the same stations that operates on 6447, 9101 and 16665 kHz LSB with callsign "XSE". The Chinese lady says "MSG, GA, AGN, ZNN, SK".

Tony reported the station on 8621 kHz on 28 August at 1120 UTC.

If you know who this is, please let me know!

Unid pip

An unid pip appeared on 30 August on 8340 kHz. Tony heard it at 1130 UTC in Argentina while the station was weak but good audible during the evening and night in Western Europe. Voices and morse messages were heard on the same frequency but it is yet unknown if these are related. I locked a receiver on 8340 kHz for several hours on the 31st and heard nothing but the pip every 2 seconds.