Numbers Station

I stumbled across one of those mysterious numbers stations early today. These stations are presumed to be related to espionage in some matter, often from Cuba it is presumed (Google it). This one was on 5900 kHz, at the bottom end of the 49 metre broadcast band, at 0518 UTC. It was a fairly strong signal. The transmission mode was AM but they were sending five-letter groups in Morse code.

Numbers Station on 12133 kHz

Today I was listening to the AFRTS station on 12133.5 kHz when a numbers station started transmitting on top of it. The stupidity of this astonished me. Everything about numbers stations is mysterious but most of them are probably operated by intelligence services and are used to transmit messages to agents abroad. Many of these transmissions heard in North America are coming from Cuba and are presumably being used to transmit message to agents - i.e., spies - in the U.S. The AFRTS station was just broadcasting general interest programming (news, sports, that sort of thing) but for that very reason it probably has a large audience among military personnel. Starting up the transmission of a numbers station right on top of a United States armed forces broadcasting station, which many U.S. military personnel are listening to, would seem like a pretty stupid thing to do.

Details: Freq: 12133 kHz. Mode: Morse code. Time: 1400-1430 UTC. Good signal. Came on air at 1400. Began with “DWNGA DDAWN URUSN” repeated several times. Then repeated just “URUSN” several times, followed by two BT prosigns. Then into five letter groups. At 1430 sent AR AR SK prosigns and went off air.

Numbers Station - 5898 kHz

On July 3 when I was tuning around the bottom end of the 49 metre broadcast band, I happened across a station on 5898 kHz that was transmitting in Morse code, sending text in 5 character groups at a fairly rapid clip. This was at 0505 UTC (around 1 a.m. local time). This is probably one of those spy stations you read about in the news, where some country's intelligence service sends encrypted messages over shortwave to their agents abroad. A lot of these stations apparently operate from Cuba. I obviously have no idea where this station was from or what message it was transmitting. But even when you have no idea what the station is or is sending, it is still fascinating to run across these sorts of stations. Another example of the unusual sort of thing you find on the radio bands.