Mysterious HF Number Stations

Much has been written about number stations over the years, although little is known for fact.

We do know they often broadcast on a schedule, so with a little planning, it is quite easy to receive them for yourself. Online SDR receivers take this to a new level, and now with TDoA, we are able to learn something about the geolocation of the transmitters.

It’s probably no surprise to learn many are now being geolocated to the area of Russia and Poland.

I remember the first time I ever stumbled upon a mysterious signal reading out numbers, this was BG (Before Google) so it was hard to identify or read about the history of these stations.

Needless to say, I started to log the station’s frequency and content, and would often find the same stations time and time again.

BBC Radio 4 program first aired in 2005.

Priyom.org provide excellent service, collating lots of information in one place. They also link to various SDR around the world, providing you with a unique insight into this mysterious world.

The strange thing is they are still around today, despite us having the internet and 101 ways to encrypt and send messages these days. The attraction of HF is it leaves no digital footprint, and messages can be broadcast to 1 or many recipients over 1,000 of miles.

The Conet Project spent many years recording these strange stations and later selling these as audio recordings on CD’s

You can listen to many of these stations on my SDR, I have been added them to the frequency dial to help identification. Over the coming months, I want to collect some recordings and add them to this page.

The BBC has published a few articles on the subject one is “The Ghostly Radio Station that no one claims to run” and you can listen to the UVB Buzzer below.

Why not check out the geolocated maps, and view the site in Google street view.

UVB-76 Buzzer (Geolocated) or maybe (Geolocated)