A few years back some brave souls visited the site of the old transmitter at Povarovo and posted some pictures and video of the trip: http://bydunai.livejournal.com/749.html
What a dreadful noise! I wonder if there's a good reason so much cold-war detritus is so ominous, so foreboding, and so nerve-wracking in its design, character and presence.
Maybe there are practical reasons in this case; maybe the sound is memorable, or recognizable even with marginal reception, etc.
I read this article last weekend and after reading it, I put batteries in my shortwave radio to see what was out there. Turns out, there's pretty much nothing.
I couldn't hear anything on 4625 kHz. I let my receiver scan and when it was done I checked out what it detected and found absolutely nothing interesting. The most powerful signals were Christian broadcasts that had a kind of doomsday feeling about them.
It seems like there's a lot of underutilized spectrum.
Night hours are best for shortwave reception. You could also need an external antenna depending on how far you are listening from. Another problem, probably the biggest one today, which affects reception on these frequencies (and generally on the HF bands) is the radio noise generated by many bad designed switching power supplies and appliances. Switching regulators (power supplies, converters, chargers etc.) for efficiency and size reasons have moved from the tens of KHz through the hundreds of KHz and recently they started working above 1 MHz which means having into our homes one or more transmitters with antennas (mains or output cable) that if not properly designed, filtered and shielded will render reception on HF bands next to impossible.
As others have mentioned, the time of day may have effected reception of the 4625 kHz station.
However, in general, I've noticed that there seems to be far fewer stations received on the shortwave band these days, compared to the 1980's when I listened to shortwave a lot as a kid. I think this is because I'm using a low-end receiver with its built-in telescopic antenna instead of a more sophisticated SWL setup with a proper antenna. Broadcasters such as the BBC World Service target specific geographies with their transmissions so they can be received on a low-end radio, and they no longer bother targeting developed regions such as North America with these transmissions. I'm guessing if I used the same radio somewhere like Africa, I'd be able to pick up a lot more stations.
> It seems like there's a lot of underutilized spectrum.
There's some good reasons for this. HF is pretty challenging to fully utilize.
You have propagation that varies between "worldwide" (so it's difficult to assign new bands without ITU involvement), and "sunspot" (so you better have a plan B). And these variations aren't just over the duration of a sunspot cycle, but also over the day/night cycle.
eg, for maritime use, we have channel clusters at 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16MHz. Which to use depends on the time of day the distance to the other station, and how much the sunspot cycle is messing with your first choice. Fun!
Then the physical challenges that arise from the ideal antenna length being proportional to the length of the wave. At 2.4GHz the challenge is precisely cutting your quarter-wave antenna to a fraction of a mm (31.25mm). At 2.4MHz same challenge becomes finding space for a 31.25m (~100feet) antenna.
Another big consideration is that these frequencies aren't particularly friendly to high-speed digital use. I suspect this is related to Nyquist theorem - the fewer waves you're receiving per second, the fewer symbols per second can be encoded into them.
And finally, some rather difficult legacy users. Aviation and Marine users who consider their usage life-or-death, radio amateurs that likely do too (heh), radio-navigation (I was reading about Loran making a comeback recently, to provide some backup when GPS is manipulated), over-the-horizon radar (which can be a lot like sharing a telephone call with a foghorn), etc.
All this taking up about as much bandwidth as one wifi channel ..
As the article says, just because you couldn't hear it the one time you tried, doesn't mean it isn't transmitting. You hearing it depends on the condition of the ionosphere. The time of day, the number of sunspots along with other things will effect your reception of the signal.
From what I understand it isn't on all the time. There are actually long periods of time where it doesn't transmit anything. Last week when I was digging a little deeper I ran into an older discussion on another board where they were saying it was off for years and came back on when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Were you in a good spot? I can hear a lot of stuff with my shortwave receiver and I'm in SLC, Utah. Occasionally, I get to hear pirate transmissions and whatnot.
> the Buzzer operates at a relatively low frequency known as “shortwave”. This means that – compared to local radio, mobile phone and television signals – fewer waves pass through a single point every second. It also means they can travel a lot further.
Is it? If you imagine a fixed point in space, a short wave would mean more waves pass through it every second, not less. Short waves have more energy (they have bounce up and down more quickly) which allows them to travel further.
What's to stop an adversary from broadcasting the same tone on the same frequency and overpowering the signal in certain areas? It strikes me that if the conjecture (of it being a reserved frequency for war time command signals) is correct, it would be relatively easy to break. Perhaps the weekly random words are some kind of authentication mechanism, but that seems like a long time to have to wait to authenticate the signal.
It sounds from the article they likely do know where the antennas are based?
If not, is it possible to use direction finding to obtain the location of antennas propagating shortwave frequencies?
(I assume this is more difficult due to the use of the ionosphere)
Also is there any remote chance the hardware attached to the aerial (power amps etc) could pick up unwanted RF or other interesting electrical interference and re-broadcast it, which may give some useful information.
It reminds me of a number station because the article had a long section talking about numbers stations, and speculating on where "the Buzzer" fits in, given the assumed typical uses for those stations.
It is a numbers station. It's been known for years as the article says, and referred to as a (one of the many) numbers stations. Many/most don't actually read numbers.
As mentioned in the below comment, the author buried the probable lede: most of the time transmission is a placeholder to discourage others from using the band. During exceptional circumstances (as defined by the station's operator), it will transmit coded messages to global/regional operatives. E.g., to coordinate espionage when conventional communications are offline.
[+] [-] wichert|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rosbrith|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lagged2Death|8 years ago|reply
Maybe there are practical reasons in this case; maybe the sound is memorable, or recognizable even with marginal reception, etc.
[+] [-] besselheim|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bahjoite|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|8 years ago|reply
I couldn't hear anything on 4625 kHz. I let my receiver scan and when it was done I checked out what it detected and found absolutely nothing interesting. The most powerful signals were Christian broadcasts that had a kind of doomsday feeling about them.
It seems like there's a lot of underutilized spectrum.
[+] [-] squarefoot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simmons|8 years ago|reply
However, in general, I've noticed that there seems to be far fewer stations received on the shortwave band these days, compared to the 1980's when I listened to shortwave a lot as a kid. I think this is because I'm using a low-end receiver with its built-in telescopic antenna instead of a more sophisticated SWL setup with a proper antenna. Broadcasters such as the BBC World Service target specific geographies with their transmissions so they can be received on a low-end radio, and they no longer bother targeting developed regions such as North America with these transmissions. I'm guessing if I used the same radio somewhere like Africa, I'd be able to pick up a lot more stations.
[+] [-] soneil|8 years ago|reply
There's some good reasons for this. HF is pretty challenging to fully utilize.
You have propagation that varies between "worldwide" (so it's difficult to assign new bands without ITU involvement), and "sunspot" (so you better have a plan B). And these variations aren't just over the duration of a sunspot cycle, but also over the day/night cycle.
eg, for maritime use, we have channel clusters at 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16MHz. Which to use depends on the time of day the distance to the other station, and how much the sunspot cycle is messing with your first choice. Fun!
Then the physical challenges that arise from the ideal antenna length being proportional to the length of the wave. At 2.4GHz the challenge is precisely cutting your quarter-wave antenna to a fraction of a mm (31.25mm). At 2.4MHz same challenge becomes finding space for a 31.25m (~100feet) antenna.
Another big consideration is that these frequencies aren't particularly friendly to high-speed digital use. I suspect this is related to Nyquist theorem - the fewer waves you're receiving per second, the fewer symbols per second can be encoded into them.
And finally, some rather difficult legacy users. Aviation and Marine users who consider their usage life-or-death, radio amateurs that likely do too (heh), radio-navigation (I was reading about Loran making a comeback recently, to provide some backup when GPS is manipulated), over-the-horizon radar (which can be a lot like sharing a telephone call with a foghorn), etc.
All this taking up about as much bandwidth as one wifi channel ..
[+] [-] crispyambulance|8 years ago|reply
Here's the antenna:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4793923,-76.279183,3a,44y,28...
[+] [-] wedowhatwedo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hourislate|8 years ago|reply
It could be off again, don't know.
[+] [-] tuxxy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jankotek|8 years ago|reply
Nice explanation.
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andyjohnson0|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.irdial.com/conet.htm
[+] [-] askvictor|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PascLeRasc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anfractuosity|8 years ago|reply
If not, is it possible to use direction finding to obtain the location of antennas propagating shortwave frequencies?
(I assume this is more difficult due to the use of the ionosphere)
Also is there any remote chance the hardware attached to the aerial (power amps etc) could pick up unwanted RF or other interesting electrical interference and re-broadcast it, which may give some useful information.
[+] [-] linuxguy2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trendia|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nqzero|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajmarsh|8 years ago|reply
https://lifehacker.com/5961035/how-to-listen-to-real-spy-bro...
[+] [-] gregmac|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
[+] [-] khedoros1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1_2__4|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] westbywest|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bamboozled|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Luc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipunchghosts|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f4rker|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]