Posted on 10/10/2011 12:02:35 PM PDT by Army Air Corps
Background
A little after 1600 UTC on February 21, 2010, in the #wunclub IRC channel, a user (LDO, a European region monitor) threw out the question "Vietnamese numbers? 10255" I had been paying fairly close attention to the Asian numbers stations for the past year or so, and immediately tuned to the indicated frequency of 10255 kHz.
Sure enough, there was a previously unreported Vietnamese language numbers station on that frequency. S6 or stronger here in Southern California. What made this signal fairly interesting is that as far as I know no Vietnamese numbers station of any kind had been reported in recent years.
The transmission consisted of a female voice, in Vietnamese, announcing groups of numbers. Each group consisted of 5 numbers between 0 and 9. The frequency was 10255 kHz and the mode was USB.
Unfortunately I did not catch the beginning of the transmission. I caught about 20 seconds of groups before there was a non-numeric announcement that was repeated several times.
After a short pause a new message started, with several lines of announcement and again into 5 figure groups.
That first recording is about 4 minutes and 41 seconds long total. I have since learned that this recording probably contains the tail end of one message body and the entirety of another.
UPDATE (May 20, 2011): The station is back on the air after a lengthy absence. Between March 1 and March 7 the station resumed operation with essentially the same formats and habits as before, and still on 10255 kHz starting at about 1600. The speaker was again female, as heard in February of 2010, and with a new 30 group message.
(Excerpt) Read more at token_radio.home.mchsi.com ...
this is vetry interesting. I know litle about radio. Does ‘numbers stations’ mean a short-wave transmission? Are they illegal in VN? Are the numbered groups code?
And just to show you how uninformaed I am about radio, is short-wave an AM transmission?
Sorry to be so ignorant but i find this interesting.
Your questions are not dumb at all.
I’m curious too.
Let me know if the Vietnamese start building some odd looking contraption by the sea...............
I remember the Spanish Numbers station years ago on Shortwave, I always speculated it was coming from Cuba.
It’s an old and common way of getting info to spies abroad. There are Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean systems...
Many of them endlessly repeat the same combinations, and FINALLY there is some tiny change —often it means nothing, sometimes it means a lot.
Numbers Stations are radio stations that do what the name implies - they transmit voices reading blocks of numbers. Often there are tones preceeding and following the block of numbers. Some Numbers Stations play a short clip of music before transmitting the number block (The “Shropshire Poacher” station being one of the more famous).
The most popular theory is that Numbers Stations are used by the intelligence services of many nations to communicate with agents in the field. The thing is, no one is 100% sure what function they serve and what the number blocks represent.
I have read reports from amateur radio groups who have studied the hell out of these stations and the common thread is that activity usually does increase days or weeks before before some event of note occurs. Yes, the common thought is that they are used for communication with agents for intelligence services.
Whatever happened to “John has a long mustache”?
You may be on to something! ;-)
Spies use it together with a one-time pad to be reminded to drink their Ovaltine.
Sorry about that, it was the Lincolnshire Poacher and not the Shropshire Poacher. I had shropshire on the brain for some reason.
“Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine”
4-8-15-16-23-42
“Blessent mon cœur d’une langeur monotone.”
Another Powerball winner!
On a serious note, the ssb nature of the signal makes me suspect it’s just some yay-hoo with a ham rig playing games. Real numbers stations use AM to minimize the technical requirements on the receiving end. A spy should be able to get it on an inexpensive unmodified drug store SW capable radio and a wire strung across his apartment. Also it’s not in a standard SW broadcast band, too high for 31m, too low for the 25m band, but is close to the 30m ham warc band.
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