Strongest signal ever for Cuban spy numbers

[GB46]

Cuban spy numbers

Time: 20:58 UTC / 12:58 PM local
Freq.: 16180 kHz

They're still on the air now at 21:08 UTC.

The signal strength varies between S9+ and S8, and the audio for the female voice is much clearer than usual.

This is on my Sangean ATS-909X, as usual, with just the whip antenna. I can also pick it up just as strong on my 23 yr. old Sony ICF-2002 with a much shorter whip -- in fact, it even comes in well when the whip isn't even extended!

73

Gerry

 

[dlwtrunked]

Cuban spy numbers
Time: 20:58 UTC / 12:58 PM local
Freq.: 16180 kHz
They're still on the air now at 21:08 UTC.
The signal strength varies between S9+ and S8, and the audio for the female voice is much clearer than usual.
This is on my Sangean ATS-909X, as usual, with just the whip antenna. I can also pick it up just as strong on my 23 yr. old Sony ICF-2002 with a much shorter whip -- in fact, it even comes in well when the whip isn't even extended!
73
Gerry

Always remember that strength on HF is not very meaningful as far as nearness is concerned. (which you may already know but then this if for others). One HF station was much stronger when I lived in Ohio about 350 miles from it than when I lived on 20 miles from it. some years ago I drove between two HF stations about 600 miles apart. Starting at the 1st, both the 1st and 2nd were strong with the first being much stronger. At 20 miles from the 1st, it was not impressive and one cold hear multipath but the 2nd was still strong. As I headed to the other, the first disappeared after about 30 miles but I could hear the 2nd hundreds of miles away very well. When halfway to it, both station came in well. As I approached the 2nd, at about 50 miles or so, I could not hear it but the 1st was now very good. When I got with 5-20 miles of the 2nd, it started getting stronger but it was not until within 5 miles or so that it out did the first. A lesson for all, if an HF station is very strong (unless you are very close and probably close enough to know who it is) is almost certainly hundreds or thousand of miles away. I have experienced this on about a dozed HF station that I have driven to. The listening hobby has been such, that it is likely someone will now wrongly put that there is Cuban numbers station in SW Canada.

 

[GB46]

The listening hobby has been such, that it is likely someone will now wrongly put that there is Cuban numbers station in SW Canada.

By the way, on that frequency they seem to be having trouble with their audio feeds, because there are long periods of dead carriers. After one of those periods today I suddenly heard the characteristic sound some devices make when switched on and off, i.e. the little beeps at rising pitches you get when you turn the device on, and the same beeps in reverse on shutting it off. This happened several times, until the audio feed came back. At an earlier date they accidentally started out with a very brief transmission of a foreign language prorgram from Radio Havana Cuba (not surprising).

 

[dlwtrunked]

...At an earlier date they accidentally started out with a very brief transmission of a foreign language prorgram from Radio Havana Cuba (not surprising).

Similar has been observed back to the 1980's about the time when Mike Chabak (deceased) headed a hobby project (I think it was called "Project Morning Star") monitoring and documenting these particular Spanish numbers broadcasts these. Back then, there were more of the cw (using the ANDUWRIGMT=1234567890 which I figured out back then from the "count") than now and of course no digital broadcasts. We even tried comparing the hum on the transmitters of the numbers and RHC with no success (different frequencies/paths gave different phase delays). Some dozens of hobbyists spent many late nights learning digits in Spanish between these and the now gone counting station.

 

[IcomIcR20]

I've heard them at 59+60db... probably higher than that since my meter was pinned at +60 and that's as high as it will read. I don't think I've ever heard anything else that actually pinned the meter!

 

[poltergeisty]

I've heard them loud and clear in Colorado on an Icom IC-R3.

 

[Hooligan]

Some of the transmit systems were designed to blanket a very large area with a very strong signal in order to reduce the efforts that the intended recipient would need to make in-terms of decent receiver, low noise-floor, good antenna, etc. and doing so also means that hostile counterintel/SIGINT forces couldn't make assumptions on the intended recipients region based on the transmitted signal's path, MUF, etc.

Anyway, I remember as a dumb, junior radio-geek in the early 1980s I caught a #s broadcast that pinned the meter on my R-5000 and made me speculate that somewhere within a couple miles of my house in Birmingham, Michigan there must have been a clandestine spy station transmitting to nefarious foreign agents who may have been lurking even closer... But then a minute later, I'm up maybe 100kHz and thinking nothing of Radio Canada International pinning my meter on 5950.

 

[N4DJC]

About the time became interested in SWLing and amateur radio, a govt agency (CIA I suppose) was recruiting Morse intercept operators at several larger hamfests I attended.

 

[db_gain]

The beauty of it is you can now tdoa them and find out the general location of a given tx.

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