Numbers Stations

Many years ago, at the height of the Cold War (mid 1980s - not the mid '60s as the press would have it!) , I used to listen to strange broadcasts consisting of spoken groups of numbers. Much later I discovered these 'numbers' stations, existed all over the world, and were government run covert stations, transmitting operational orders to 'agents in place', what the thriller writers would call spies.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, these stations have much decreased in number and activity - but they do still exist!

This morning, I have been listening to one named E11 (these names come from the CONET project, that documented these stations), on 7317kHz USB.

The original Enigma and CONET projects no longer exist, however there is still a group that is documenting these stations -

http://priyom.org/

One great aspect of this projects website, is that on the homepage there is a schedule and a 'next station' timer! This makes tuning these stations in very easy - simply tune to the frequency and mode shown for the 'next station' and wait...