dexter
Offline
southampton, uk

I have recently become obsessed by shortwave radio, specifically Number Stations.
Wikipedia described number stations as:

Numbers stations (or number stations) are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a spelling alphabet), tunes or Morse code. They are in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, though sometimes male or children's voices are used.

Number Stations are reportedly run by government Intelligence groups and codes are supposedly decrypted using a one time pad system.
You can hear what Number Stations sound like here: http://www.archive.org/details/ird059
My favourite ones are "Cherry Ripe" and "Lincolnshire Poacher" both reportedly run by MI6, the international branch of the British Secret Service. They both use a lo-fi rendition of the folk song that the station is named after as a signal before the broadcast starts.

I am yet to be lucky enough to find a Number Station but I hope that I do shortly.

Have any of you found anything interesting or strange on shortwave radio?

ant1
Offline
uhajdafdfdfa

m0d is into shortwave radio, I think, check out this demo, he sampled a lot of stuff from his radio for the music.

dexter
Offline
southampton, uk
ant1 wrote:

m0d is into shortwave radio, I think, check out this demo, he sampled a lot of stuff from his radio for the music.

wow that is awesome. i reconize some of the pictures from the conet project. sounds like he is sampling good old the good old lincolnshire poacher.

µB
Offline
A gray world of dread

I think the Lincolnshire Poacher is still broadcasting, I used to run into it pretty often actually. I've had Magnetic Fields a few times, too. I don't spend much time with SW anymore, and I don't have a good receiver or antenna. It's still fun to browse the weird stations tho, and I'm a total sucker for the distortion, interferences, crosstalk, RTTY bits that float through SW.

Last time I spent more time with it, I was intrigued by "Bird calls", short, synthesized loops that sound somewhat blackbird-ish and repeat for a long time. Appearently they're masking a RTTY transmission.

I've recorded one here.

Strange you should come up with it now, I had a talk with m0d about SW and other EM transmissions just the other day on IRC. He has proper equipment, and told me how Auroras affect transmissions that bounce off on them. How cool is that?

I'll share a few of my favorite radio/EM links:

http://www.intervalsignals.net/
Radio Interval signals, including some oldskool ones that are pretty rad

http://www.dxing.com/modesand.htm
Good beginner's guide

http://www.ralabs.com/webradio/
Remote controlled SW receiver, pretty decent

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/
The Uber-Version of the above (thanks m0d)

http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/mcgreevy/
Some cool recordings of Auroras

dexter
Offline
southampton, uk
µB wrote:

I think the Lincolnshire Poacher is still broadcasting, I used to run into it pretty often actually. I've had Magnetic Fields a few times, too. I don't spend much time with SW anymore, and I don't have a good receiver or antenna. It's still fun to browse the weird stations tho, and I'm a total sucker for the distortion, interferences, crosstalk, RTTY bits that float through SW.

Last time I spent more time with it, I was intrigued by "Bird calls", short, synthesized loops that sound somewhat blackbird-ish and repeat for a long time. Appearently they're masking a RTTY transmission.

I've recorded one here.

Strange you should come up with it now, I had a talk with m0d about SW and other EM transmissions just the other day on IRC. He has proper equipment, and told me how Auroras affect transmissions that bounce off on them. How cool is that?

I'll share a few of my favorite radio/EM links:

http://www.intervalsignals.net/
Radio Interval signals, including some oldskool ones that are pretty rad

http://www.dxing.com/modesand.htm
Good beginner's guide

http://www.ralabs.com/webradio/
Remote controlled SW receiver, pretty decent

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/
The Uber-Version of the above (thanks m0d)

http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/mcgreevy/
Some cool recordings of Auroras


I heard the Lincolnshire Poacher has not been transmitting since 2008 but I think Cherry Ripe is still broadcasting, it uses the same voice and a similar interval tune.Thanks for the fantastic links, i'm experimenting with the online recievers now.

dexter
Offline
southampton, uk
dexter wrote:
µB wrote:

I think the Lincolnshire Poacher is still broadcasting, I used to run into it pretty often actually. I've had Magnetic Fields a few times, too. I don't spend much time with SW anymore, and I don't have a good receiver or antenna. It's still fun to browse the weird stations tho, and I'm a total sucker for the distortion, interferences, crosstalk, RTTY bits that float through SW.

Last time I spent more time with it, I was intrigued by "Bird calls", short, synthesized loops that sound somewhat blackbird-ish and repeat for a long time. Appearently they're masking a RTTY transmission.

I've recorded one here.

Strange you should come up with it now, I had a talk with m0d about SW and other EM transmissions just the other day on IRC. He has proper equipment, and told me how Auroras affect transmissions that bounce off on them. How cool is that?

I'll share a few of my favorite radio/EM links:

http://www.intervalsignals.net/
Radio Interval signals, including some oldskool ones that are pretty rad

http://www.dxing.com/modesand.htm
Good beginner's guide

http://www.ralabs.com/webradio/
Remote controlled SW receiver, pretty decent

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/
The Uber-Version of the above (thanks m0d)

http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/mcgreevy/
Some cool recordings of Auroras


I heard the Lincolnshire Poacher has not been transmitting since 2008 but I think Cherry Ripe is still broadcasting, it uses the same voice and a similar interval tune.Thanks for the fantastic links, i'm experimenting with the online recievers now.

do you know any good IRC's with people that will be able to tell you which number stations are currently broadcasting

µB
Offline
A gray world of dread

m0d said there are quite a few across esper.net

But your better bet is to google up websites of communities, they have most of the recent stuff that's going on covered. Don't have any bookmarked, sadly.

A little OT, but "Slow This Bird Down" by Boards of Canada has the most beautiful little SW outro ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlkSqcE … =1#t=5m00s

Inspired me to make a VST effect that tries to emulate SW radio distortion effects. Haven't worked on it in a while though. neutral

Last edited by µB (Jan 9, 2010 3:27 am)

dexter
Offline
southampton, uk
µB wrote:

m0d said there are quite a few across esper.net

But your better bet is to google up websites of communities, they have most of the recent stuff that's going on covered. Don't have any bookmarked, sadly.

A little OT, but "Slow This Bird Down" by Boards of Canada has the most beautiful little SW outro ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlkSqcE … =1#t=5m00s

Inspired me to make a VST effect that tries to emulate SW radio distortion effects. Haven't worked on it in a while though. neutral

that would be a fantastic VST effect but very hard to make!

µB
Offline
A gray world of dread

I've made a track for the ambient compo with a WIP version: clicky
The bass is clean FM, the chimes are FM that's run through the VST. The voice sample also runs through it (note the compression and frequency filter, FM/AM distortion and overdrive). The ambiance (CW signal, band sweeps etc) is also created by it.

Awol
Offline

This sounds pretty cool! How do you get into it and what kind of equipment do you need? Are there any number stations in the US?

Esopus-dragon
Offline
New York, New York

You can hear Numbers Stations sampled on Stereolab's album "Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements" and Boards of Canada's music.

LastKnight
Offline
Middlesbrough, UK
dexter wrote:

I have recently become obsessed by shortwave radio, specifically Number Stations.
Wikipedia described number stations as:

Numbers stations (or number stations) are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a spelling alphabet), tunes or Morse code. They are in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, though sometimes male or children's voices are used.

Number Stations are reportedly run by government Intelligence groups and codes are supposedly decrypted using a one time pad system.
You can hear what Number Stations sound like here: http://www.archive.org/details/ird059
My favourite ones are "Cherry Ripe" and "Lincolnshire Poacher" both reportedly run by MI6, the international branch of the British Secret Service. They both use a lo-fi rendition of the folk song that the station is named after as a signal before the broadcast starts.

I am yet to be lucky enough to find a Number Station but I hope that I do shortly.

Have any of you found anything interesting or strange on shortwave radio?

GOOD GOD THOSE NUMBERS FREAK ME OUT! love it

NO CARRIER
Offline
GNV / FL / USA
Awol wrote:

This sounds pretty cool! How do you get into it and what kind of equipment do you need? Are there any number stations in the US?

VBLANK and some other Hacktory dudes in Philly might be able to help you out!

Reteris
Offline
̛̛̩̥̩̥̩̥̅ ̥⎬̛̛̛̛̛̥̥̩̥̩̩

Texas is too big for shortwave

Awol
Offline
NO CARRIER wrote:
Awol wrote:

This sounds pretty cool! How do you get into it and what kind of equipment do you need? Are there any number stations in the US?

VBLANK and some other Hacktory dudes in Philly might be able to help you out!

Great!

ant1
Offline
uhajdafdfdfa
Awol wrote:

This sounds pretty cool! How do you get into it and what kind of equipment do you need? Are there any number stations in the US?

I think the #1 basic thing you need is a shortwave radio, for example there are some here, just make sure you get the right range (3,000–30,000 kHz, says wikipedia). Other people will know much better than me though.