You read database of spynumbers, token. Two posters egistered 5.9, 5.88, 5.83 in spynumbers database this morning 4 am with identical "Atencion...12349 3456 etc. Who else would have done that but Cuba..
I believe you are misunderstanding what I was saying.
I do not doubting that the reported V02 (and M08 and SK01) stations are out of Cuba. I do not doubting that when you hear “Atencion XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX” that you are hearing V02.
What I was asking was how sure you were of the 5900 kHz frequency you reported, instead of the frequency it should actually have been on, 5898 kHz. I then explained how the 5898 kHz (5.898 MHz) frequency is sometime incorrectly reported as 5900 kHz. (5.90 MHz). This incorrect reporting of frequency happens several times a year.
When people are reporting 5900 kHz (5.900 MHz) for V02/M08/SK01 they are most often incorrectly reporting a transmission that is actually on 5898 kHz. And when people report 5880 kHz (5.880 MHz) for V02/M08/SK01 they are most often incorrectly reporting a transmission that is actually on 5883 kHz.
Checking the spynumbers.com database (
Numbers Database Search Form ), as you suggested, I find no V02 entries for this morning (August 12, 2011 UTC, but I also checked August 11 UTC), on any frequency. Most surely there were V02 transmissions in the last 24 hours, I heard several myself, but most do not get reported by anyone.
The most recent entry for V02 that I see in the Spynumbers database is for August 10, 2011. Looking at the entry (DB ID 104190) I assume it is yours since the location is the same as your location. The next most recent was August 3, 2011, by the same person.
There are some guidelines when reporting numbers stations to spynumbers.com (noted at the top of the data entry page), and these guidelines are a good idea for reporting in most forums including here:
- Report frequency in kHz, not in MHz. It is nearly universal to report HF (shortwave) frequencies in kHz, and the spynumbers database says specifically to enter the frequency in kHz. Since it sorts on these frequencies if you enter 5.9 and everyone else enters it as 5900 it will not sort your data correctly. HF frequencies often need to be tuned to the 1 kHz step (or smaller), so even if you report it in MHz you need to include 3 decimal places, ie 5.900 or 5.989, not just one or two like 5.9 or 5.90. 5.900 MHz is the same as 5900 kHz, but 5.9 MHz is assumed to be 5900 kHz, since the last two digits are not defined.
- Confirm the frequency of a station, don’t just go with what “sounds” best to your ear. This can mean using a technique called “zero beat” to confirm an AM stations freq. If your radio only tunes in 5 kHz steps always question if the station is truly on a 5 kHz step or not. Broadcast stations often are, numbers stations and utility stations often are not.
- Report dates and times in UTC. When no time is given the database assume 0000 UTC, and when you give a local time on a forum how is a person reading that time supposed to know what local time is for you, and how that applies to local time for him? Radio reception reports are done, by convention, in UTC for both date and time. It is also a good idea to include the date in any comments you make about days, for example, saying “this morning” can be misleading as not everyone’s mornings are the same around the World. Saying “morning of August 12” or “on August 12” is much more clear and will lead to fewer misunderstandings.
- If you report a station in a specific mode, such as LSB or USB, make sure you check other modes so that you can exclude them. If you can hear and understand a station in both LSB and USB it is not in either, but must be in DSB or in AM mode. A station that is in AM can be easily understood in both LSB and USB, but reporting it as LSB or USB would be incorrect and misleading to others. V02, for example, is almost always in AM. It has had “error” transmissions in both USB and LSB, but those are the exception, not the rule.
T!
