There was a numbers station comp album out about 2 years ago. Everyone on it used #'s samples in their pieces. I'll try to dig it up.

I'd also like to point out that there are also a couple of broadcast AM stations with /modulated/ carrierwaves which contain what appears to be a bitstream. Very low bitrate, and very odd indeed. One of them is carrying what appears to be a atomic clock time sync code.

If so i'd say even my untuned roll of wire should be able to pick something up!

Also what emission mode do they use? just regular AM or do they venture into sideband?

I heard about all this recently in a security conventiion and  I thought it was both scary and super cool.
Thanks for the reference links! I'm interested in this one time pad thing though. Any more info?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad#Example
^ Here is a great explanation of how they work.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/onetime/otpjs.html
^ here is a fun little generator of one time pads

Interesting effect as well is multipath propogation. Signals go out from the antenna in almost all directions, and it has the possibility of arriving at the recieving station at slightly different times depending on which route around the planet it took. You get an interesting phazer effect because of this as signals arriving out of phase with others cancel out part of the signal. It's actually one of the big problems on shortwave.

Awol, SW has a pretty decent range. The whole point of number stations is that field agents can get their briefings from afar, after all. But yeah, there are american number stations. Here's a list with UTC schedules of active stations:
http://www.spynumbers.com/profiles/enigma.html

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.

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!

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!

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