From the Dungeon.     The Lincoln Poacher and other 'numbers stations'             27th Nov 2006 GM1SXX

In this short episode I'd like to make mention of 'numbers stations'.

Numbers stations have been around for a long time. When I was a teenager way back when in the days when I had hair, and had developed a keen interest in radio, I used to come across them regularly on the shortwave bands. These stations usually had some sort of identifying tune or chimes followed by a voice reeling off hundreds of numbers, in groups of 5. These voices are still around today, long after the end of the cold war, so what are they?

The most obvious answer is surely some sort of non-public information in a coded form. The most likely way of coding might be by the 'one time pad' method.... a simple code translation pad that's only used once, to decode a specific message then shredded, eaten or totally destroyed in some very secure manner.

The Lincolnshire Poacher is arguably the best known of these 'number stations', so called because of the inital tune used. The BBC recently carried a program about 'number stations'. You can listen to it by clicking on the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincolnshire_Poacher_%28numbers_station%29
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/pip/j2rhi/


The best guess is that the 'Lincolnshire Poacher' is based in Cyprus.

Check this out for an aerial farm.  http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/page496.htm

No wonder he can put out such an excellent signal!

There is plenty of material on the internet and numbers stations have been around almost as long as me, so have a little fun and take a swish around the dial for some of these radio intruders.

I rather suspect that some of these stations may be based in Embassies around the world. You know the sort of places.... nice big old houses with all sorts of strange wires, caged dipoles, huge log-periodics  and other aerials sprouting from the roofs.

Here are just a few links to be going on with.

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=570   http://home.freeuk.net/spook007/  http://www.spynumbers.com/

http://www.dxing.com/numbers.htm http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,65698-0.html

http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/appeal.htm  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_broadcast

http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=185  http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=10480

Thanks to Nick M1HOG for pointing my interests back in this particular direction. 

Nick maintains an excellent website at http://www.m1hog.com/


73 Al.
GM1SXX