Day 252, Number stations

While thinking about wireless transmission I was reminded of the number stations.

Hang on, that's a bit of an odd introduction, why any of that?

At one time I had access to a radio scanner and had listened to some pretty interesting things.  It was possible to listen to mobile phone conversations (one half at least), emergency services, police broadcasts and on one occasion this included a response to a murder.  Obviously if anyone asks then I didn't listen to any of these things and I'm making it up, much like everything else here, due to possible legal issues.  I was wondering what there was to listen to in the twenty first century now that most transmission is digital and encrypted.  Number stations were the thing that came to mind, so I set off to find some.

Number stations broadcast sequences of spoken numbers at set times on particular days.  There are variations on this in that some are in morse code and other broadcasts are sequences of tones.  There's a pretty good BBC radio programme here on the YouTube for further background information on number stations and one well know one called 'the Lincolnshire poacher'.

So how do you do this magic listening stuff then?

Well, handily there is a station schedule here giving the frequencies and times that known number stations broadcast.  You don't need any fancy equipment to listen to number stations as the website also gives a link to this Dutch website which uses Software Defined Radio (SDR).  Clicking the link on the first site launches the Dutch site tuned to the next broadcast frequency.  SDR is a method of reproducing a wireless receiver entirely in software, it also allows multiple different frequencies to be listened to by multiple different people simultaneously.

So what is this numbers stuff all about?

These broadcasts are absolutely nothing to do with spies, oh no, let me be absolutely clear.  No, not spies.  They are almost certainly special mind control tricks used by aliens, and in fact my mind, for what it is worth, is under alien control.  Oh yes.

Here's a recording I did from using the software defined radio and listening to one of the number stations.

Now I have no memory of why I was thinking about wireless transmission.

Who am I again?

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