in 1980s Manchester i remember as a kid selecting SW on my grandmothers Grundig yacht-boy n210 radio from 1973 hearing some of the strange sounds coming from beyond the soviet iron curtain. at that time i felt Russia was a hostile and mystical place where no one would ever dare leave or enter into.
"Russia was a hostile and mystical place where no one would ever dare leave or enter into" So right. It's difficult to explain the way people perceived life behind 'The Iron Curtain' back then. My mum was a scientist of modest note particularly among Eastern Bloc academics [1] and consequently she received many official invites to go on exchange visits and lecture tours behind The Curtain. On one occasion in the mid 1960s when she visited Moscow, she took a Standard 8 Bell & Howell movie camera (silent) and shot footage of Red Square, Lenin's Tomb, the incredible 'GUM' department store and so on. The results were terrible (this were not a Plug n Play, user friendly device - like most tech back then) but everybody and his dog back in the UK wanted to see the movies because people here just couldn't imagine that a Westerner could even go there, let alone make home movies. Literally hundreds of people must have passed through our crude home cinema. So rare were genuine professional visits to the Eastern Bloc that frequent visitors were sometimes asked by our security services to do a bit of amateur espionage there - deliver a package, meet with someone, get a delivery or a verbal report about something and so on. This is what Greville Wynn was doing when he and Col. Penkovsky (KGB) were blown (November 1962) - Wynn spending some uncomfortable time in the Gulags and the hapless Penkovsky presumed executed. I often wondered whether Mum ever did that sort of thing. She was an ideal courier. [1] She died in 1984 having received, inexplicably, a Polish Wikipedia page - the only one. How odd. pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_E._Ryman
On a serious note, there have been a number of reports of British academics etc that were secret agents in the Cold War that never told their families and the true story only came out after their death
@@alastairbarkley6572 What a terrific story, especially for me as I was in Moscow several times during those Soviet days. Yes it was exactly like that.
5:00 sounds like a dude walked in with his radio playing and started buffing the floors. How funny would it be if it's been an open mic for 40 years and no one knew lol.
That noise at 5:40 is actually the sound the City of Chicago downtown Tornado/Emergency sirens make. Dual tone, and going up and down to make it much more audible over and between the large buildings! Reference link for the sound! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TnQG0mgoops.html (not my channel or affiliated with)
The one that used to get the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as a SWL in the 1970's was the G03 gong station! The whole SW band was teeming with eerie, weird and fascinating signals back then.
I can tell you exactly what it was like to find numbers stations in the 80s... a stormy as frack night at the end of Long Island, NY, and I picked up a boatload and it was freaky, creepy, scary, mysterious and I was hooked. Thank the ugly gods I wasn't alone. Scared the holey shit outta me :)
and nothing you could find about it in the local library. Calling back on your illegal cb with 500W amplifier didnt have any result also Scary yes, but still searching for signals every evening
@@RiffZifnab i CAN listen to them now and in fact have the entire Conet Project box set plus extras. I was fascinated and of course, no way to get info on them those two nights. Sometimes late at night I can get a bit oogly headed listening but that's okay, its nice that it still gets under my skin. When I first stumbled over info on numbers stationis and put two to two together... well, that was it. Then I wanted to know more and more. LOL! ahhhh, such a glorious sinkhole.
As a child of 1972 I completely understand what you’re saying. It’s so crazy because it really was a scary time to be alive, and at the same time it was so exciting. Especially down here in New Orleans because a lot of people didn’t know that New Orleans was quite the little hotspot at times because of it being a major port in the Gulf of Mexico, the river, and because of the Air Station here to. We use to watch completely blacked out airplanes late at night or in the early early morning hours between midnight and 3 am. My family are all cops and my uncle Mike who was like the super cop type because he was a homicide detective, and a member of SWAT. Because our swat team for the NOPD also worked their regular police department jobs, and when he transferred out of homicide he was technically assigned to motor pool because he was building a remote control system for an unmarked police car that was used in hostage situations. All while working on the department’s communications systems so he got into the number stations more or less as a hobby, but was able to use the network towers the department had to listen in to them. Personally my knowledge of ham radio and such, but his son and me were the same age so we would stay at each other’s houses on the weekend’s, and he would show us and let us listen to them with him. An of course to us kids he was like Q from James Bond Movies. Sorry for the long comment about this. It’s just the video and your post brought back so many memories that I really haven’t thought about in probably 20 years give or take. Think I need to call my uncle and see how he’s doing
@janedagger Same here, my friend, out on eastern Long Island as well. I spent many late nights as a teen back in the 80's searching for and listening to those creepy number stations. I distinctly remember the sensation of the hair standing up on the back of my neck one night, trying to make sense of what the heck I was listening to.
I'm an electronics/software guy that has a hobby in clocks and electronic timekeeping, synchronisation etc. I expect the ticking clock transmission is exactly what it appears to be... a clock. Sending a precise 1 second tick would be very effective for keeping equipment in correct time synchronisation. It only requires an accurate second pulse because any drift of the receiving clock devices is quite slow, so they can easily be disciplined into precise timekeeping by receiving the 1 second pulse signal, even if there are large breaks in transmission. I have made similar systems myself. It makes sense to have a state run 1 second pulse, for older equipment before GPS timekeeping or even in case of GPS loss due to war etc.
Yeah, I used to be a calibration tech. Before we had atomic clocks we would run our counters using a Radio Clock Signal, as you describe, to run a comparison tape to our counter, and we'd tweak the Timebase of the Counter until the tape indicator would be running dead center showing no deviation. I knew guys that would disconnect the deviation meter's needle so that it would just hang dead dog in the middle to draw a straight line on the tape, but heck, you'll always have some timebase deviation, and all you have to do is touch the needle with your finger to know it's just hanging dead dog. But, nowadays, they can build atomic clocks the size of a 8 legged chip. Take care. It's great to see that soimebody like you is monitoring the World.
@@leovolont wow what wonderful info! THANK YOU for sharing! I cant take credit for "monitoring the world", I think the person behind this video channel gets the credit for that! But I do like to share where I can. Old guys like us should really be sharing our experience with the old technology before we pass away, like to put our stories and tech knowlege up on the internet so it can be there for future generations. 👍
Every grid powered qould just use the grid tho. The frequency is pretty deliberatly kept constant. Having a second value to cross reference if needed or when off grid sure might come in handy
@@TV4ELP in some countries the grid keeps good time, in other countries not so much. With things like military bases and small installations they could be off grid or prepared to be off grid at any time.
@@TV4ELP For electronic counters with just ordinary accuracy, such as plus or minus 1 hz for 10 MHZ, you need better accuracy than the Municiple 60 Hz. Remember that Europe uses 50Hz for the same applications, and so the Frequency of Line power can be all over the place without it ever mattering. Also, frequencies, for calibration have to be traceable to some standard. The Radio Frequencies ARE cerrtified, and so the calibrator can submit the identification of the Radio Broadcaster, along with his deviation comparison tape record, in the counters certification file. Image using the local Union Operated Municiple Power Plant as a Calibration Standard... the Calibrator would be looking for a new job the next time he, or the Counter he calibrated, gets audited.. Yeah, Metrology is a Science and so Calibrators don't, and can't screw around.
Had an instructor at Fort Gordon who said the signal being broadcast doesn't really matter. The complex tones/patterns are there to authenticate the station. The real 'message' is the exact time and date a station goes off the air permanently.
@@crazyskyguy The Dead Hand protocol - if the control stations go quiet, it is assumed that Mission Control has been eliminated by the enemy, so launch all nuclear warheads
Ohh that is creepy... I would think that it means those stations is part of the automated Russian "Dead Hand" system meant to launch all their nukes if the signals stop (as they assume they are destroyed by nukes). Problem is that if for example you have a huge solar storm like "the Carrington" event the signals will also stop.
I live near the cold-war focused Wende Museum in California. An audio-centric exhibition about cold-war numbers stations would be fantastic. Are there public archives of soviet and american short wave stations? I wish the cold war were actually over... :'(
I can confirm how creepy it was coming across a numbers station in the late `80's early `90's as a kid before I knew what they where. It became my favorite things to do late at night because it felt like a little window into a forbidden bit of the ether! I found out later on in the late `90's when I got my ham ticket what they where, and really got into it. Then when my family finally got internet service, I started learning about number stations which led me down a rabbit hole that got me into hacking, IT, and to my current job of being a system tech in Land Mobile Radio. I still love listening to the old style station numbers stations because it brings me back to those fun nights as a kid listening to them on my old Halicrafts tube HF rig!
The ticking clock is definitely state sponsored. They give resources to anything that can add to intimidation and confusion, even if it is not clear if it will be worthwhile.
@@simplygreen5832 Makes sense then, fits the narrative Russia is pushing trying to draw analogies to WW2 with their current war. Possibly even hoping it will add to their verbal nuke threats?
@@simplygreen5832yes, if I remember correctly after the 6th army and part of the 4th Panzer army were surrounded in Stalingrad the Red Army played the ticking clock noise 24\7 over loudspeakers with the occasional message "Every 30 seconds a German soldier dies in Russia." Or something to that effect.
@@bluskytoo I noticed yesterday watching the Russian Victory Day parade, that during their minute of silence, they also had a ticking clock and it was similar: Reverberating and not a real clock, i.e. the ticks didn't alternate as from a real clock mechanism but were similar rhythmic taps. Worth checking if the Ticking clock signal is the exact same as the audio played at the parade.
Would you mind marking when youre using stock footage at the bottom of the video? most people assume that the video shown is about the signal being discussed.
Are you new here? Lewis has explained his use of stock footage many, many times. Actually, some of the 'stock' footage is his own - breathtakingly good drone footage of the English countryside, for example.
@@alastairbarkley6572 No, i am not a new viewer, and i personally would prefer a caption that states what tower is showing. even for the stock footage, as i am genuinely curious.
@@alastairbarkley6572 You do realise new people are allowed to watch these videos and it's easy to see at least one 'new' person may see at least one of these videos every single day?
@@ellouco1020 I'm can't hear anything else than "oblicz" no matter how I try. Maybe there is some other explanation, but it doesn't sound like eng. oblique and definitely not like obliks
Does anybody listen to China Radio International on short wave? I sometimes have it on on the background. Very slick, informative and for the most part pseudo-credible. It puts me in mind of SWLing the 'communist stations' that were easily audible in the evenings across the UK in the 1960s and beyond. They were terrible: laughably crude propaganda particularly the ridiculous and plainly made up 'Listeners Letters' - "Cedric from Smethwick asks whether life for workers in the glorious USSR is really as good as people say. Cedric, it's BETTER..." and so on. The most amazing was Radio Tirana in Albania (that secretive, repressive nation being aligned with Mao's China rather than the USSR) where the 'News' was so breathtakingly false, so distortedly anti-Western that it made your jaw drop. Dishonesty like that was quite a shock, then. These days we'd just mutter about Fake News and ignore it.
Do a Google on "June Taylor", who was Tirana's main announcer in Cold War days. Her story is interesting - a New Zealander of Maori origin, adopted daughter of a left-wing dentist, who ended up reading dreary propaganda for years in a tinpot dictatorship on the other side of the world.
I do, on a tiny C Crane Skywave SSB, east coast of the US. That's exactly what it reminds me of, too, although I didn't start listening until the late '70s. I always wonder if VOA copied that slick manner, or if propaganda just oozes out that way over the radio...
Yes and also North Korea on 12015kHz although CRI sometimes broadcast on the same frequency, it's fun hearing how productivity and food production is at an all time record, it reminds me of the USSR propoganda in the 1970s where the claimed tractor production figures would mean everyone had one lol.
When I was a kid, before the internet, there were many CW beacons across the hf spectrum. I learned Morse code in one summer when I was 15 so i could get my Novice licence. In those days there were many International broadcast stations that had there own unique chime that would repeat over and over. It would start maybe ten or fifteen minutes before broadcast. My favorite was Radio Deutsche Welle, I would sit and listen to it while doing homework etc! LOL!
@@Jeff-sp7bg Yeah, not nearly as much as when I was a kid but I still pick up Radio China (mainland and Taiwan) in English and of course Cuba. Also there's a high powered station in Florida (WRMI) that broadcast programs from various European Countries on 9955 khz and 9455 khz. 8-)
As you are so spot on with all your info Lewis 👍, I really enjoy all the stills and video of all those antennas! I guess it appeals to the antenna geek in me! God bless the antenna geeks! 😃
That's really wild, Lewis! I love the fact that I'd once assumed SW radio would by now have become relatively boring and maybe even dead. But that clearly hasn't been the case! And in these crazy times, who knows what might pop out of the aether! Your report here is a case in point. Cheers! PS: Thanks for these 'reminders' to fire up my radio more often. 🙂
Shortwave is more relevant than ever but you just can’t “dive in”. You do need to know time of day, versus the frequency. Higher frequencies work better in daylight, lower (below 10 MHz) work better in darkness conditions. There are other variables. I can hear AIR traffic (which is sporadic) at about 8900 kHz. The hobby is not dead, but you have to search through the bands and above all, be patient.
What you heard on that high frequency sound that was erie... was Russian high data packet transmission hidden in coding. You overlay several signals at once to confuse the listener. You just need to know how to filter out the noise.
@@oggaBuggaI don’t know about completely, the buzzing is there to generally keep the band clear and jamming it keeps the band not clear. The issue is that for jamming a marker to be useful it has to be very persistent.
I remember in the 90's as a kid, hearing loads of numbers stations late at night. Cubans, Israelis, etc. Also, lately, SVO has been audible very clearly here in the southern US.
As a teen i used to spend hours mucking about with my shortwave searching for the bizarre and boy did i find some amazing sound/noise signals. I always wondered as to origins of the particular weird ones My hobby is modular synthesizer's and patching up a sound/noise to match what I once found on shortwave would be a daunting effort indeed.
This is intriguing and is definitely worth monitoring because a sudden change from the norm could be an indicator of something happening. Sounds obvious but the updates are appreciated.
A great video as always! I think that during your session listening to The Buzzer, you encountered a thing that's been going on for some time now: The Buzzer sending different types of digital transmissions. This has happened from time to time, but in an increasing rate. A few months back, I witnessed Buzzer's distinct signature signal going out in my SDR's waterfall. I tuned to the frequency and it started sending a digital transmission. They usually stopped for a few seconds with silence, the channel marker returning briefly and cutting off abruptly, a few seconds of silence and another, different digital transmission resumed. During the pauses I also heard some russian voices briefly, one with counting up, which in the middle of it changed to a digital transmission. This went on for about an hour and a half with the channel marker appearing after a brief silence and then going out again. During this period, they also used nearby frequencies to send similar digital signals. This test also attracted some pirates: Between the silence, another russian voice was caught singing something like "perturbatsij, perturbatsij" and that could also be heard mixed with the digital transmissions. Also some music was played and heard underneath the digital signal and once the signal stopped, the music continued. My best guess is that what you heard and published in this video was actually The Buzzer being used as a digital transmission test, with pirates trying to jam it to the best of their abilities. The channel marker was likely off during that time.
We had this weird old radio that sat in our kitchen and one evening I was looking for a pirate radio station (this was the late 80's) and I came across two stations right next to each other on the end of the tuning scale, one was a morse code and the other was a man reading out numbers in English but it was accented making it clear English was not his first language, it was creepy and sinister.
Great video as always, Lewis. At 5:42 the rising and falling signal is a Federal Signal model 1000T or model 1003 dual tone siren. certain municipalities would use the dual tone mode as an indicator of a fire. super creepy
The only Thunderbolts that could produce alternate wail were 1003s, as they were the only ones with solenoid shutters. The audio here, though, is from something electronic, most likely a Modulator, though one could probably get an EOWS-series to produce it, as well
UVB is certainly getting weird lately. I just made a recording of it, and I caught it cut from the digital hash back to the buzzer, then back to the hash, then a lot more crackling noise, then it beeped a bit, then back to the hash. It didn't sound like it was being jammed, so I think that might all be coming from the official military transmitters. I can provide the clip if you'd like. Please let me know.
Another rad video. Thanks man. Someday I'll take pics of this tower in anoka minnesota. It has massive vents on the building and seems a Lil out of place compared to the building and what not .
They are wasting their time. The buzzer is there to keep the channel clear, when they use it the buzzer stops. If you want to annoy them, jam the band when they aren't transmitting the buzzer.
If you jam it continually, wouldn't you affect both the buzz and any message transmission? Because that's probably easier than trying to guess when they'll send a message.
As pointed out by DiamantHaren, 4:57 is a jammer being played over top of the electronic music song "Epic" by artist "TheFatRat" at a timestamp in the song of about 0:49.
Re: spooky. Can confirm. I spent hours playing with my Grandpa's shortwave radio receiver listening to all sorts of weird things. The first time I heard a numbers station I guess I was about 12. It was later at night and it messed with my head.
There have been a number of these odd stations come and gone since I first got my amateur radio license in 1979. As an 11 Y.O. kid the early number stations confused me to no end.
The Ticking Clock is 5x5 and sometimes much stronger here in southern Australia before morning greyline. Have heard it go from siren to ticking and back, then air raid siren to ticking etc.... This signal has no fading whatsoever and would seem to be beyond a pirate effort at this point.
I was in the cascade mountains, McKenzie pass.Oregon. Monitoring CB transmission. Frequency 27.015 27.025 and 27.035 all had bleed over of morris code from somewhere. It was faint but definitely there. Maybe this is normal as I am fairly new to radio.
I remember that back in the 1980s, a signal could be heard in Germany, somewhere in the usual VHF range used for radio (88-108 MHz), where numbers were read and constantly repeated. Probably doesn't exist any more, but I know we wildly speculated about the reason and use of that signal. I still think it was related to the secret service of the GDR.
IIRC the siren used for the “siren head” video was actually from some kind of obscure tornado warning or air raid siren. I remember seeing a video on it ages before siren head became a thing, but i honestly can’t remember what country was using it and what it was for
unless you get different listeners from equal distances from around the original tower to confirm signal strength to pinpoint a new location its hard to tell if this is internal or external tampering or even deliberate act by russia to mess around with the frequency to outdo the hackers to turn their attention elsewhere
I like listening to E11... something about the voice is just soothing lol. I catch it giving actual messages more than once or twice a month tho... it seems to be once or twice a week.
So interesting listening to number stations. You can kind of tell how many agents an intel service has by monitoring to the digits. Usually the agents code is repeated several times at a precise time, which you can log then look back on in the future. Then usually they then go in the 5 digit OTP code. and finally the transmit the message. No code is less that 10 digits, 5 for the agent/operator then 5 for the OTP in use followed by the message. I've setup an RPi to start logging reoccurring numbers and the time logs for which they were sent/received.
Hey there =) Recently i was testing my Malahit DSP2 with a telescopic antenna and i was listening to a "Buzzer" frequency. Reception was bad, considering i was around 30 km from the UVB-76 located (as internet says) in Naro Fominsk (i was testing Malahit at the 55.5148°N 36.9786°E Selyatino). I was standing outside (testing it at a day and at night), sky was clear, no any interfering objects around me. So, the question is, is this "Buzzer" really is on this Naro Fominsk location? Or it's just a rumor?
There's a broadcast just like this every night here in the US but the frequency changes nightly anywhere from 6500khz to 11000 khz and it's in spanish. Female voice.
@5:50 the siren (named Federal Signal Modulator) is created by a company known as "Federal Signal Corporation" The siren has seven different tones, one of which is called "Wailing" which is the one in this transmission. Up until 2020, Chicago used to use this siren but recently changed it for a more conventional one, eerie AF!
I frequently sit on the websdr in poland , over the last 2 or 3 weeks listening to the buzzer. Noticed a lot of music , random talking, theme music from movies . Some really creepy jaming sounds . As of a few days ago , I noticed it has that digital screaming like you mentioned. I figured maybe Russians did that to encode the channel, or its Pirates. One thing I do know is that signal is very powerful, you would need some serious voltage for that kind of signal.
the buzzer is still highly unknown, its a long shot to go out and say "this is bad for the russian military" when the station rarely relies codes to old and defunct communication hubs.
The Buzzer has been covered by strange noises for days now. That has occurred before but you could still hear the buzzer underneath the music/rubbish. Not so much this time, no matter how hard you concentrate, can't make out the tone of the buzzer at all!
Have you noted any signals disappearing sense the over the horizon radar site* in Russia was damaged? *The facility is designed for detecting nuclear missile launching and possibly also strategic bomb planes.
Hey Ringway! I recorded some data off of a Web SDR recently, I was curious if you had any recommendations on data processing methods? I'm willing to email the audio to you if you're interested!
Decades ago a communications engineer told me that a transmission of the letter k repeated constantly since the 1950s could be heard on a restricted bandwidth, anywhere in the world, but was strongest in West Virginia. Any thoughts?
This reminds me of an episode of Fringe :) imdid buy a small sww portable radio, but unfortunately i live in an area with way too many signals and interference. So i can't pickup numberatations. Still on my bucketlist though :))
We have a radio station in Central Queensland that just plays the same piece of music ad infinitum. I don't know if they ever use it for anything else. Maybe they have a license and need to use it or lose it.
