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Main => Everything Else => Topic started by: newmanfamilyvlogs on September 13, 2010, 01:16:00 pm

Title: UVB-76 (Russian Number Station)
Post by: newmanfamilyvlogs on September 13, 2010, 01:16:00 pm
Has anyone else been following the developments with the Russian number station UVB-76?

For the unfamiliar, UVB-76 is the callsign of a shortwave radio station on 4625 kHz. From 1982 up until a few days ago it broadcast a mechanical sounding buzzing noise about 27 times a minute. On a handful of occasions over that 28 year period, a short voice message was broadcast in the form of a few numbers and several letters spoken in the Russian phonetic alphabet (Anna, Boris, Dimitri, etc). A week or so ago the buzzing stopped. It came back several days later with a stronger signal than had ever been observed, but then disappeared again a few hours later. Since then there have been a handful more voice transmissions, although some of them might be third parties (radio pirates) just looking to pull a prank.

Anyway I've been listening to streaming feeds from radios that can pick it up and there have been all sorts of weird things being broadcast; conspiracy theories running rampant and the like.

Is this too obscure an interest for anyone else here to be familiar with it?  :laugh:
Title: Re: UVB-76 (Russian Number Station)
Post by: RayB on September 13, 2010, 01:35:23 pm
Occam's Razor.

Simplest explanation is usually the right explanation. Boring, but welcome to real life.

Also, you say "last week" but I read about this news about a month or two ago. If I were to pull an explanation out of ---my bottom--- (which is what the conspiracy theorists do) the signal had to do with the Russian spies that were in the US. They got caught and the signal stopped.  ;)
Title: Re: UVB-76 (Russian Number Station)
Post by: newmanfamilyvlogs on September 13, 2010, 01:41:15 pm
Oh yeah, that's exactly what stations like this are for. There's no question about that.  There are quite a number of stations like this one. There aren't many that had been transmitting the 'beacon' for so long continuously however.
Title: Re: UVB-76 (Russian Number Station)
Post by: ahofle on September 15, 2010, 02:45:34 pm
Very interesting...I didn't know about this.  I'm guessing these broadcasts are where Carl Sagan got the idea for the 'beacon' of prime numbers in Contact?