WE ARE LEGION! Give us a kiss.

[dolari]

I haven't written my letter yet. Considering what I'm doing today, I really should. Please, everyone, wish me luck.

Dean and Jill invited me to a Labor Day BBQ, with a good deal of hamburgers, pickles, and hot dogs. And real dogs. Oh, man. LOTS of real dogs. Four. Two who were at least in the 50 pound range. Two who were smaller dogs. None of them realizing where in space-time they existed, and all trying to be in Your Space At Once.

After many hours of company and dogs, I came home and had a nice long chat with Emily, as I do as ofen as I can. Somehow we got on the subject of Numbers Stations. Anyone out there hear these stations on shortwave? I've heard quite a few of them. Eventually when Dean got home later, he got in on the numbers station stuff. He got really interested, and we pulled out the shortwave radio.

My radio isn't the BEST shortwave radio (well, I'm not sure how good it is, as I'm always indoors), but we turned it on, went for the lowest frequency and slowly ran up the dial. We got the Usual Religious Nuts around 3500MHz and slowly went up the scale. And at 4430MHz, we picked up a VERY faint distorted signal. It was a male voice, too blurry to really make out what he was saying, but the cadence and innunciation was there. We'd found a numbers station.

Now...tell me...how secret are your secret messages when a first time scanner can find your signal? :)

(Yes, I know these are heavly encrypted public transmissions, but this was his first time....)

Comments

[chrysalis.livejournal.com]

So what exactly is a numbers station?

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

It's a spy station. :)

Basically, the home country beams a really broad signal to the rest of the world. They've already told their spy to listen at this time, on this frequency.

He tunes in, usually hears a short intro of some sort to confirm he's on the right station (usually tones, a key phrase, an numbered identifyer, or even a piece of a song). Then for the next few minutes, a voice (usually female and heavily pieced together like a phone directory message) delivers a long line of numbers. Some are fakes since they've become quite popular in the alst decade or so, and some like the Star Stations of the East know they have public listeners and introduce themsleves like radio stations, play popular music while they give out their numbers and codes, and wish the listeners prosperous days, and good fortunes. :)

The spy knows what this means (ot finds out with the help of a decoder), and follows the directives. Al he has to do to listen, and the only thing that could give him away are the fact that he has a shortwave radio AT ALL, and the decoder (if he doesn't eat it first).

The whole world can listen to them, but just one or two people can decode them.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

http://ns4.swl.net/radiochina/newstar/newstar.html - A New Star Numbers Station fan page. :D

And some archived numbers recordings: http://home.planet.nl/~boend177/sound.htm

[gwenners.livejournal.com]

Now...tell me...how secret are your secret messages when a first time scanner can find your signal? :)

The best place to hide something is in plain sight.

Cheers,
Gwen Smith

[vaysha.livejournal.com]

I'd not heard of them before so my Dean and I followed your link- wow! that is so cool.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

I just posted a link to a whle archive of them. :D

I love this stuff. :) I'm hearind the same thing James Bond is out in the field. :D

[emilydm.livejournal.com]

73, 88, 9 :)