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

(Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 15:50:35 +0000)

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Voice stations

E03

Every month Axel from Germany brings us the IDs of Lincolnshire Poacher E03. Here they are.

1st half of October:

2nd half of October:

E03a (E04)

Also Tomonori from Japan brings us the IDs of Cherry Ripe E03A (former E04) every months. Now here they are.

2nd half of September:

1st half of October:

E10

This month there were only some PCD1 msgs, monitored on October 12th and 16th, 1900 UTC in USB by Aquila. But at the beginning of October, some of us could monitor the 6930 E10 "CIO2" sked for a long, long period. Mark Taylor in the USA monitored it on October 5th, 0100+ UTC, in USB, which was confirmed by Chris S., also USA, who heard the 6930 carrier in the evening "for extended periods, much like last year", as he writes. Also I (the Kopf) could monitor this freq in the evening for longer than the usual 5 minutes time slot at H+45. I also monitored "CIO2" on October 8th on 10125 for 20 minutes. At this time (0600-0620 UTC) the 6930 freq was already inactive. Such an irregular transmission on 10125 was also monitored 2 days later, on October 10th, 0420 UTC, by Brad in Sydney, Australia.

Back to 6930, Mark reports about a QSO during the "CIO2" transmission, which he monitored on October 20th. He reports:

"Someone was trying to QSO on 6930 USB in English between E 10 (CIO 2) broadcasts. It was amusing to hear them knock off, then start after. "I guess it's gone now."

E10 broadcast "CIO 2" from 0130 - 0135 and 0145 - 0150. No message."

Thanks, Mark, for this new and interesting report and for your log.

On October 19th Tom from the USA reported hearing E10 on 7918 with jamming. He writes:

"Heard on 7918 at 1600 UTC "YHF" with a lengthly 90 group message. About 3 minutes in.. after the ID and the start of message groups I hear a loud jammer come on. Been hearing it frequently these days on many MOSSAD frequencies. A bunch of us on dxtuners internet radio were listening and speculted that it could be Iranian jammers."

Thanks also to Tom for his report.

E11b

On October 19th, Guy Denman from UK could monitor a new sked with msg after several ones with 0-msgs. The time was 0830, and it came on the standard freq 8544, calling "184/35). Thanks, Guy.

S25

In the last N&O edition, we reported about Igor's S25 catch from September 24th. Here's another note from Igor, which comes from October 2nd:

"I think this tx is very rare but active now. I heard tx like this 1-2 times in year."

Also Gert found a station, which could be S25, as he reported on October 7th via the E2K group:

"In search of E17z (not found) I found a S25 kind of station on 11115 kHz. I know this station has been heard before, there is a sound sample placed in the files section on october 1st.

The station I heard today, thu 7 oct 2004, 8.00 UTC was as follows:

Id 637 is not used by any S06 or E06 stations in the last 13 months.

If I recall correctly, the original S25 did have two transmissions, each 20 min long and each divided in two parts. So, in 40 minutes there are 4 groups given. Now, there are two groups given and the time of transmission seems shortened to only twice 4 minutes. I wonder if there is a second transmission somewhere. I searched but found nothing. ..."

Unfortunately, there were no replies to this mail. If you know if this really is S25, please let us know.

V02/02a

In this edition there is MANY to report about this mysterious station from Cuba. At first I want to thank all the guys and ladies for their reports, which now partially follow after another.

On October 2nd, Mark from the USA reports about a V2 transmission with irregular presentation of the number groups. He writes:

"V2a 10/2/04,6768 USB in progress at my tune in at 0109 and still on (0121). Has a nasty buzz on the frequency, but the interesting thing is that the numbers the senorita is intoning is irregular in presentation with some of the 5 number sets intoned regularly, with others with some numbers rushed, as though the recording was speeding up and slowing down in a highly erratic way. ..."

Later he explained, that the digits were irregularly spaced, so that he didn't think, it came from a worn-out voice machine or something like that. This "irregular irregularity" was later confirmed by Tom H, also USA, who also didn't know the purpose of this.

Thanks to Mark and Tom for reporting their discoveries.

Chris S., USA, presented us a very interesting post about V2, written in the Spy Numbers general chat forum on October 8th:

"One day about a year or two ago I was hunting down number stations. I found a carrier I thought sounded familiar just before the hour. I waited for the top of the hour and sure enough..... "attencion... attencion.... uno dos tres ........." It was a good strong signal. I decided to listen to it so I just left it on in the background for noise basically. I wish I had the recorder running. After about 5 minutes the audio abruptly stopped but the carrier was still there strong. About 10 or 20 seconds later I heard what sounded to me to be a US telephone switch make the familiar announcement "If you would like to make a call please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and call the operator. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP......" ETC. It sounds to me like the Spanish number station was definitely originating from this country via a telephone auto patch. The connection to the transmitter site must have been lost during the transmission and the transmitter just kept transmitting through the off the hook type message from the phone company....."

Indeed, that's VERY mysterious! Some of us numbers stations' friends, especially coming from the USA, who read this post, were also very astonished, and they started speculations about the purpose of this matter. Chris S., USA, told us, that there was a conspiracy theory, that the V2/V2a transmission originally would come from the USA and not from Cuba, but, Chris went on, that was not a good theory. We know, that also the US had Spanish numbers station transmissions (I mean V5, the CIA in Spanish, which shut down a few years ago). But V2/2A and M8/8A (the sister station) are further transmitting, and - we remember - it went off the air, as Hurricane Ivan came across Cuba, and after a break of 3 or 4 weeks, the transmissions appeared gradually on the expected freqs. -Well, the reported phenomenons are mysterious and worth to monitor them the next time, but we didn't come behind these mysteries yet. So hopefully, we have more info about this "oddity" in the next edition of N&O. But anyway, thanks to Chris S. for posting these things.

Back to V2 logs, a last one comes from Chris S. He found V2 on October 15th on 10.715 kHz. He monitored again several irregularities:

"... Friday 10/15/2004 starting early at 1958 UTC. Callup was 888 16

Major problems for Castro's Clowns today. The record got stuck several times on uno, and we heard strings of 10 or 20 uno's in a row without pause. Still going now at 2008. ..."

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