Number Stations

For years my backup strategy has been to compress and encrypt selected files, then send the hex dumps to transmitters in remote locales. Numbers station geeks dutifully jot down the data, filling pad after pad. When the data apocalypse befalls us, my recovery strategy will involve traveling far, having adventures, and collecting pages.

My favorite "number station" was the YouTube channel WebDriver Torso. For a hot minute, lots of people were trying to analyze the videos for "secret" messages hidden in the videos and wondering who they were for, when in reality they were a bunch of test videos for test automation...

Get a web SDR (DDG&#x2F;Google), Fldigi and start playing.<p>Linux: install paprefs&#x2F;pavucontrol, run paprefs, set a loopback device in the settings.<p>OpenBSD: The FAQ has a multimedia package on setting up sndio on monitor mode, nothing difficult.

I am living in southern Europe and it&#x27;s extremely hard to listen a Number Station except for the most famous (The buzzer, the Pip, etc.). I rarely had the opportunity to listen some non Russian NS.<p>You need a decent radio with SSB support and a good antenna. Most of the cheap RTL devices are not covering HF band. For whom that want to start, my suggestion is to buy a Belka-DX: it&#x27;s cheap (less than 150€), very portable (comparable to a cigarette box), it covers from 1.5Mhz to 30Mhz and has SDR capabilities (although with a very narrow bandwidth).

So, not sure I want to go down the Google-hole, but curious what changes have been going on recently with all the chaos in Easter Europe.<p>Are dormant stations coming alive?

see also, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;UVB-76" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;UVB-76</a>

My introduction to number stations came from Boards of Canada, who sampled them in their songs.

Been meaning to learn how to work with shortwave. I have an old sailing boat from the early 80s with a shortwave radio as old as the boat itself. So far it has just been a good ornament; it looks like some sort of steampunk contraption.

I was lucky enough to visit the &#x27;Duga&#x27; radar which is responsible for the famous woodpecker transmission. It was a real treat, I didn&#x27;t know I would see it when I was visiting Chernobyl in 2019.