UVB-76 Locations

As it is known, the UVB-76 was moved from Povarovo (near Moscow) late 2010 and its new location remained a mystery for a while after that. The triangulation attempts did not give a very conclusive answer and picking the right site by Google Earth only was too much of searching a needle from haystack.

Thanx to the efforts of priyom.org team and information from long-time number station aficionado Ary Boender, there are now one well-documented and one less-documented location where the current UVB-76 transmitters are believed to operate. As always, nothing is certain and guaranteed, but the information so far seems plausable.

Big thanx to the priyom.org guys for figuring it out!

The coordinates for the sites are:

60°18'40.1"N30°16'40.5"E
55°25'35"N 36°42'33"E 

Google has done a cool job of mapping out the large part of Russia for us before the iron curtain started to tighten up again, so we have an opportunity to take peek at the first site:

Ary Boender describes the location (Kerro Massiv, Leningradkaya Oblast) it at his wonderful Numbers and Oddities Magazine no. 200  as part of the 60'th communication hub codenamed Vulcan, servicing the Western Military District.

We do not have to leave our armchairs to get even more in-depth knowledge of the site, as Ary has been successful acquiring some materials describing the antenna setup:

According to Ary, the number of antennas totals to 30, including: 19 VGDSh units, 4 VGDShP units, 6 RGD units, 1 V-shaped antenna. All 23 horizontal dipoles (VGDSh), 4 (of 6) rhombic antennas (RGD) and 1 V-shaped antenna are suitable for 4625 kHz. The directional RGD antennas are beamed to Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Moscow (2 antennas to each direction).

This site is mainly just a transmission site, so it is getting its content to transmit from the 60'th communication hub "Vulcan" located in St. Petersburgs one of the most beautiful districts. The feed is transmitted from hub either by phone lines or by radio (such as R-414S).

The antenna setup for the hub according to priyom.org collaborators is rather crowded (pictures courtesy of priyom.org):

Little is known about the second stated buzzer location at Naro Fominsk (55°25'35"N 36°42'33"E ), only that it is belonging to 69th Communication Hub.

As a sidenote, the newly found locations correlate quite nicely with the triangulation attempts few years ago. (The comments in italic below are left for historical purposes - there was indeed a suspicion of multiple transmission sites).

These are the first results of trying to position the UVB-76 transmitter. The results are somewhat surprising, as the station triangulates way closer to the Internet Repeater than UVB-76 original site used to be, yet there is no reasonable difference in signal strenght nor behavior. No conclusions can be drawn yet, as there are several possibilities:
- The station is using heavily directional pattern for transmission
- There are more than one transmitter and different ones have been spotted during triangulation.
While the new bearings arrive, just enjoy browsing the map! The red semi-transparent sectors can be eliminated by pressing the "sectors" button above the map.

Coordinates mathematics © 2002-2010 Chris Veness
See http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html for excellent library functions.
Triangulation framework by UVB-76.net

If you want to add a similar triangulation page to your own site for whatever purposes, the script can be downloaded here:
uvb-76_triangulation.zip

The usage is quite simple, just search for the array named 'triangulations' inside the code and replace with the values you would like to use.

Just be sure you do not remove the credits for Chris Veness, and if you really feel the script to be useful, the credits to UVB-76.net would be nice, as well as the entry to the comments section here, where the particular triangulation can be seen! :)