UVB-76 - Back Again

The blog headlines are getting sort of monotonous - back/not back/silent/buzzing.. If it (forbid) goes mute again, I shall come up with more glamorous statement!
However, exactly on September 14, 2010 on 11:16am UTC someone took a plug and put it whenever the UVB-76 sound is coming from, as you can listen from the recording below. The first buzz was emitted at 11:16.02.



The WinradHD screen from the last 24h before the buzzer return shows nothing much out of ordinary, but let it be included for a reference:

As the station did actually function without the buzzer sound, as has been the case for past weeks, here are the sound clips of the latest voice transmissions, latest of which did happen only 25 minutes before the activation of the buzzer.

UVB-76 - No buzzer but voice

Since the UVB-76 lost its buzzer sound on Sptember 9'th there have been hardly any audible tests on 4.625MHz. However, the station has not become extinct, as several voice transmissions have happened since. The latest was today, September 11 at 13.53UTC.



The transmissions yesterday night were somehow related to the phone line communication, up to the point where russian internet forums started to speculate that UVB-76 is hardwired somehow to a phone exchange. Considering the amount of clicks, pops, line noise, and the fact that in voice transmissions recordings people are responding to the call with "allo", which is pretty much the same meaning as "hello" in western phone communication (and never is used in radio transmissions in Russia nor anywhere else),  this theory has some grounds.

These are the recordings of the possible phone conversations







And these are the other voice messages transmitted meanwhile

How to pick Your First Shortwave Receiver

As the signal from this feed is only capable to provide what UVB-76 does, the broadcast has been more static lately than anything else. It is still good for one thing, and this is to have people exploring further in shortwave mystiques. 

As the first and only genuine thing is to buy your own receiver, I am now writing a short survival guide in radio receivers world, so that one would be able to end up with more or less satisfying purchase.

At the beginning there are some technical aspects to consider, the most important of which is "what do I want to listen at". 

While the spectrum is full of all sorts of signals starting from about 30kHz and ending up above 20GHz today, the most rewarding was and is shortwave. The higher frequency bands are fun if you know what to do, but if you are reading this tutorial you might seriously consider starting from shortwave, get accoustomed with basics and only then move on to higher bands. 

The first aspect to consider at the receiver is what frequency band it covers. For shortwave work you shall aim at least with the receiver with the coverage from 510kHz (low end of the commercial midwave (MW) broadcasting) and ending at 28MHz (upper end of the Citizen Band (CB) free shortwave frequency). Below and above is nice to have but not mandatory. 

You shall also check, especially on a cheaper "travel" or "world band" receiver type of radios (the ones what resemble ordinary pocket- or clock radio but have more frequency bands on them), that they will not have gaps between band selections. Many of them have blind spots  between different shortwave bands and you will be disappointed if everybody will be talking about the station you will not be able to pick up as it "falls between" your frequency selection. 

Choose one with contignous coverage from at least 510kHz to 28MHz.

Second important aspect is the modulation what you want to receive. On shortwave band two modulation methods are dominating: AM (amplitude modulation) and SSB (single side band). Check the links, it will explain in detail the technical background. 

Most of the commercial broadcasts are transmitted in AM modulation, and  there is a pitfall you may find yourself from, if you have acquired el cheapo clock radio with shortwave capabilities. It is likely oriented towards commercial radio stations and does not support SSB. 

What you are interested of is "all the other stuff" besides commercial broadcasts and this is predominantly happening SSB mode. SSB itself divides USB and LSB (Upper Side Band and Lower Side Band) and you are going to need both. There are some stations on a shortwave band operating on FM (frequency modulation) and DRM (digital), but this is still marginal today. 

Some of the more advanced radios also have a special mode for morse code, named CW. While this makes reception of the morse code more effective from interference and morse perspective, it does not mean that you can not receve morse in AM or SSB mode. You can, but it is just not that clear signal (there are lot of other aspects regarding morse and digital transmissions, but this takes another article).

Choose one which as at least AM and SSB demodulation. 

Now that you have your basics, we can start choosing the receiver.

As far as shortwave goes, you have five types of receivers to consider:

- "travel", "world band" etc. small radio receivers what are intended for listening to the commercial shortwave broadcasts at household or while traveling. 

- Professional, semi-professional and amateur communication receivers and scanners

- Vintage Shortwave receivers

- Software Defined Radio (SDR) receivers meant to be used in combination with your computer and soundcard

- Internet sites offering remote access to radios of others around the world.

This blog entry will get too long if I go in-deep with these, so I will cover all except internet radios briefly and make a separate article about the internet listening and SDR. 

There will also be a separate article about the antennas, so lets just stick with te long 10+m/30+ft wire before that.

"Travel" and "World Band" radios

These are the most simplistic (and inexpensive) variety of receivers. While the brand names like Sony and Grundig are making some, the eBay is crowded with all sorts of more or less noname types. I havent tested any of them, but looking at the eBay now there are several what satisfy the initial selection category we had above. TECSUN PL-300WT $45.99; Sangean ATS-505 for $AU169;  Sony ICFSW7600GR $185 (expensive, but brand costs); ANJAN DTS-10 $112.99; just to name first four what popped up.

It is hard to tell what is good and what is not as they are all rather basic. External antenna connector would be nice, but if not, you can fetch a long (more than 10m/30ft) wire, drag it somewhere (preferably outside the house and as high as possible (above 3m from ground minimum)) and wrap the other end around the telescopic antenna the radio has. Recording output would be nice, but absence is not the end of the world. 

Be sure tho that it would work from something other than batteries as well - monitoring some frequency means that you will have the receiver on and tuned 24/7, so it is useful to have it take its power from mains 

outlet. 

Professional, semi-professional and amateur communication receivers and scanners

These we can divide further as portable/desktop and as receivers/trancievers. Transiever means, that it has also a transmitter built in, what you are going to need only if you want to beome a true radio amateur.
The basic selection criteria stands for these as well - I have seen radios what do not do SSB ans still call themselves a scanner. 

The choice between portable and desktop is yours to make. I do have portable ICom R20 and I am very satisfied with that. However, I also possess vintage Russian R-250 tube shortwave receiver from year 1952 what weights 60 kilos and has more than 20 tubes in it. And this has given me some best moments on a shortwave.
The rule of thumb is, that all other parameters equal, desktop is better. The reason is, that it has more room for all sorts of tuning components (capacitors, coils, filters etc.) as well as for physical layout, therefore the design can be more straightforward and effective.

You should expect to spend around $200 to $1000 plus the shipping of the 6-10 kilo item. 

Looking at the moment in eBay there is not much choice at the "by it now section", with the exception of two lots of ICom R71E for $180/$185 (good pick!). 

Don't know if the fellow readers of this blog and forum have already been raiding the eBay, but the choice seems very limited at the moment. The things to look for would be Kenwood R-1000, Yaesu FRG100 and likes. Search strings to us would be "communications receiver", "Yaesu FRG", "Kenwood R", "Icom R". If you need one today, go for the ICom R71E, it will make you happy!

A word of caution tho - desktop receivers may time to time (well .. once after 5-10 years that is) need some internal tuning and calibration, so befor buying one try to figure out if someone deals with that stuff in your area. It is not that the radio goes mute otherwise, but the extra bit of sensitivity and signal quality can be lost over time.

Vintage Shortwave receivers

Like said, my vintage R-250 is a wondeful piece of equipment! There is something about the tubes what makes the feeling of the "signal really getting to you" a different experience for me. If you have some radio skills, try to find one what would work (repairing one takes a qualified radio technician, but even operating one needs some skills) and go for it.
Note, that some older Kenwood and Yaesu solid state receivers are today advertised as Vintage in eBay, but I would not consider them a "true Vintage" although some of them are 30 years old. 

If your first shortwave receiver is a tube one, you will fall in love with it even if its a regular commercial broadcast radio from 50-s. There is not much technical suggestions about it - military ones have better frequency coverage and do have SSB, however, the regular old household radios will be equally daring, although unsuitable for number stations work (for the lack of SSB and having large gaps between tuning bands)

Software Defined Radio (SDR) receivers 

These are meant to be used in combination of your computer and soundcard. Some, like ICom R100 and likes, can be used without the computer as well.

SDR principle is, that radio signal is not fully demodulated to audio in the receiver, but the signal is fed into computer half-way and all the audio processing is done in the software.

The UVB-76 Repeater is using SDR radios what cost $18 as a kit. If you know how to use these you will get amazing results, but only if you know what you do. The advantage of using the SDR is the flexibility of the signal processing - you can tweak with the decoder parameters much better than most of the desktop receivers allow. 

Important thing is that you will get he visual control over the tuning of the receiver with the SDR! As you all have been getting familiar with the WinradHD screen captures and little waterfall window the uvb-76.net has, you will get the idea. If you like messing around with the computers on every occasion, this is for you. But more of it in the next article.

Something to listen waiting for UVB-76

As the UVB-76 keeps doing what it has been doing for past week, Allerian has composed a wonderful ambient tune inspired from the station, called Tchaikovsky Meets UVB-76!

The fullrange MP3 can be downloaded here
The video clip with little less fidelity here

Something to listen at in front of an empty Winrad screen! :)

UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater QSL Cards mailed

First batch of the brand new Temporary Internet Repeater QSL cards were mailed today! I think I made it to the post office early enough, that they will carry todays stamp date, so you are going to have a little reminder about the date when the buzzer was resurrected :)
I want to thank sincerely everyone who donated on the name of everybody using this site, forum, chatbox and IRC! I would also like to thank Ben from desync.com and Javier from globaldjbroadcast.net for setting up the stream relays and offering a generous bandwidth for audio streaming! Without them this site would have been able to service 6x less listeners than it actually did at peak moments!
The whole last week this site has been like a reality-show-control-room-meeting-CNN, and with the 450+ listeners on the stream and 3Gbyte+ download rate from file area this started to get way bigger than any of the service providers would like to see on their free services chart!

With your help we were able to run like a real newssite!

Thank you!

UVB-76 Back On Air

At a convenient time of 16.20 UTC the UVB-76 finally reappeared on air with stronger signal than many have ever seen after being down almost exactly one week. With the good propagation conditions supporting it, the UK amateurs are able to receive it at amazing level (S9+10dB for those initiated), while Russian hams are picking it up at magnificient S9+40dB  (This is VERY STRONG SIGNAL, everybody).
Russian amateurs report the buzzer signal components being audible at strong levels on 4.667 (S9+5dB), 4.709 (S9), 4.751 (S8).

There were several voice transmissions, pops, clicks, and line noise occasions preceeding the buzzer reappearance earlier on September 8, but considering the current transmissions and quite coherent receiveing pattern from Europe to Russia, the current transmission looks plausable as UVB-76, although with unusually high signal level.

The voice messages transmitted have, however, rised the question of the callsign change for UVB-76, as several voice broadcasts on September 8 have been starting with the callsign MDZhB. While this remains an open question at the moment, lets summarize the last weeks events once agin, as this has been, as both, the Russian radio scanner forum and our own UVB-76 form have concluded, a week-long real life episode from LOST!

So, here's the chronology:

- September 1, 2010 4.05UTC the UVB-76 cheased to transmit anything. The absence of the signal was apparent, when no buzzer could be heard from the Internet feeds after the 4pm UTC, when something should have been audible under any circumstances.

- September 1, 22.19UTC the first supposed service acivities were observed. The faint carrier signal reappeared first on 4.626MHz and got adjusted to the 4.625MHz. However, no modulated signal was transmitted of any kind. With 450+ listeners on all Temporary Internet Repeater streams simultaneously and more than 3.5Gbytes daily outbound traffic from file store, the UVB-76 gained unprecedented attention and fanclub since the voice transmission on August 23 voice transmission. However, what we did not have was a UVB-76 signal of any kind.

- September 1, 22.25UTC the UVB-76 started to play a audio sequence, what consisted of the piece from the "Swan's Lake" and 10 buzzer sounds. The pattern was repeated throughout the next 12 hours. Although put in doubt later because of various frequency hijacking attempts, it has been deemed an original transmission from UVB-76, as it was simultaneously received at the Temporary Internet Repeater and Russian amateurs much closer to the station.

- September 2..5 a large amount of CW and voice messages were observed. While ths UVB-76 carrier was missing most of the time, it appeared and re-appeared constantly.
At the same time the first confirmed pirate transmissions were observed by European amateurs. Which traffic from that period was genuine and what was a result of piracy remains unknown (except on some explict cases where forum members were addressed directly and on ome particular shortwave graffiti case found below)

- September 5..7 revealed a prank on the Winrad waterfall screen, codenamed XYN. The first ever shortwawe graffity was born and public. As the prank went on for quite some time, an official warning was announced that the frequency hijacking attempts will be reported to the repeater home country local communication authorities. The frequency went mute and stayed this way for the most part of the September 6 and 7, with occasional carrier frequency appearing and disappearing on 4.625MHz.

- September 8 the occasional carrier appeared and disappeared, with three buzzer tests. At 10.29am UTC the carrier was appearing about 500Hz above the 4.625MHz and USB voice transmission was given by female voice. The transmission was cut off abruptly in the moddle. However, the latter suggests that two transmitters were active simultaneously, as a female voice received on 4.625MHz USB did not have any noticeable pitch shift. The voice messages reappeared together with buzer tests on 16.00UTC (female), 16.13UTC (male) and 16.18 (female). The UVB-76 got finally back on air at 16.20 UTC sometimes faint and unstable signal first, then switcing over to the very high transmission power after which the signal has been stable.

10:28 Female Voice, 500Hz carrier drift
16:00 Female Voice, Cut Short
16:13 Male counting 1-10
16:18 Female Voice and Buzzer Returns

There is also a WinradHD screenshot available what displays the frequency spectrum for 22 hours starting from September 7, 20.30 UTC

One can check the details of the last week events also Here!

The original recordings of the UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater can be found here:

UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater AM Feed Archive
UVB-76 Temporary Internet Repeater USB Feed Archive  

(The file times are UTC+3)

The good public archive recording by one stream listener with the recordings split to smaller pieces can be found here.

Now Streaming the S30 "pip" (3.756MHz USB)

With the UVB-76 off the air, theres time to provide some other listening besides. As told, I am trying to put up a "Weekly Live Number Station" show here and the most obvious candidate for the buzzer companion feed was the "pip". Here is why.

As the the case with UVB-76, the "pip" is transmitting a continuous channel marker. Instead of buzzing, the sound "pip" is used .. well, thus the name. And exactly as on UVB-76 case, it transmits voice messages every once and a while. One example can be found here. (Sample reference: http://hfsurfing.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-pip-named-s30.html)

The "pip" is a little bit more complicated to monitor tho. Namely, it is transmitting on two different frequency: 5.448MHz on nighttime and 3.756MHz on daytime. When I can quite clearly receive the nighttime feed, the daytime still needs some antenna work, so far I haven't been able to get any signal from 5.448 in some reason.

So, what is it then? If you browse the internet archives, the document here describing the UVB-76 also mentions the "pip". It is considered by this source as part of the military network, "North-Caucasus military district, Rostov/Don". As the document is a translation from similar russian booklet found here,
A nice reference about the "pip" can be found at Here.


The link is at the top of the page, labeled "new". Note, that this station is farther away than the buzzer was, so one can receive it only here during the nighttime at the moment!

Probably the First Ever in History - Graffiti on Shortwave!

There are pranks, there are pulling someones leg. And there are pranks of epic proportions! There has been a lot of swearing and cursing towards pirates occupying 4.625MHz, but this one is golden!

This is what Repeater Winrad screen looked today when I went checking after my auxiliary radio (the former workhorse on feed, Icom R20) was emitting strange sounds on USB...

For those not too familiar with russian, yes, it spells "d*ck". However, in russian culture the usage of this word has literally hundreds of meanings dependent on context. If I come up with a good translation of particular context, I will post it, meanwhile just consider, that this message is actually not that much of an insult towards anybody...

[EDIT! vvvvv]

Apparently, This has been going on already since yesterday, I just did not connect dots about the XYN and this phenomena.

WHOEVER IS DOING IT, PLEASE READ:

I am pretty sure it is not a russian amateurs work, as russia has never been a country one will broadcast with 1kW transmitter (wat it takes to reach my antenna with that signal level at broad daylight from closest russian town) at frequeny not allocated for him, especially if it is allocated with russian military. The guys would have had a visit by FSB by now.

If, starting from now, I will see anything on my waterfall, would it be unusual morse or windows sound scheme, I will file an official complaint about somebody jamming a frequency. Considering whom the frequency belongs to, I am sure the Communications Control Board will give it quite a high priority here.

UVB-76 - Do Not Believe Everything You Hear!

UVB-76 has been recently become a part of the pop culture. And as with every new thing, it attracts two sorts of people like flower attracts bugs - conspiracy theorists and the ones that do not know better that just want to spoil it for whatever its worth.

So has happened, that internet forums are getting busy with doomsday posts about how UVB-76 is related to aliens, nukes, conspiracy etc. Up to the recent post what pretty much copied the "[Agent] SALT" storyboard 1:1.

The other activity is much more annoying - some people with shortwave radio transmitters in their hands have been starting to transmit at the UVB-76 frequency, thinking its a good prank. There have been music transmissions, morse code with personal messages towards chat users nicnames  etc. Most of it has not been originating from the listening site here, but has been affecting the people listening to their own radios locally.

However, I have now strong grounds to believe, that some of the todays transmissions what have been broadcasted through the Repeater are not genuine UVB-76 transmissions. Their signal-to noise ratio and broadcast level does not match the general pattern of shortwave propagation and UVB-76 supposed 10kW transmission power.

I have been thinking, what to do about it. Shall I publish such recordings, will I fuel the pirate's and troller's activity with this, or shall I discard them as phony?

Then it hit me, that I have a disclaimer at the header of this website, what states that Temporary Internet Repeater will broadcast the received signal "as is", unaltered and without the attitude towards content. And so be it.

Please find todays recordings below. What is genuine and what is not, is yours to decide.

http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067827_H8lN4_bf8d/Female_1..9_September_5_12.30pmUTC.mp3
http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067844_qj1B2_ab5c/Mobile(GSM)_phone_September_5_12.38pmUTC.mp3
http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067965_b7vb5_1aaf/Windows_Sound_September_5_12.59pmUTC.mp3
http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067791_Md5Dm_d39c/Strings_September_5_13.22UTC.mp3
http://www.opendrive.com/files/7067956_XqsVp_b372/Voice_Transmission_PREGRADA_September_5_13.39UTC.mp3

About the strange noise listening to USB feed

First, feeds are OK and the noise visible on spectrum analyzer is not a local interference from receiving site.  I will not post the possible explanation whats going on with UVB-76 here in the blog, as this is only a theory at best, but those interested about my speculation, please check the forum at http://uvb76.freeforums.org/new-format-of-uvb-76-transmission-t56.html

The first real "Blog Post" - What to do, when UVB-76 is off the air?

With UVB-76 still silent (although the RF part of the transmitter is sending strong carrier, so it cannot be called as off the air), there is still something to listen at other than static. The occasional morse burts on 4.626MHz and 4.628MHz have been making lot of people downoading decoders and wrestiling with morse charts and the packet data transmissions on upper and lower sideband of UVB-76 signal have so far been undecoded, but I am sure some day someone figures it out (I am planning to do, at least).
However, with no comfortable buzzing around, it does not mean, that all you have to listen to is static and youtube. The shortwave band is much more than I am broadcasting from here, so I am encouraging all of you to dial in and explore!

Some words of nostalgy - I was a kid way before the internet and WWW became widely available. I am not too old (37), but I had the shortwave receiver since I remember (well, my family radio did have 3 SW bands), and spent hours dialing left and right on it. Shortwave was crowded with signals then as it is today. The mystery about it was there back then as it is today.

Look at this as an early youtube - someone, somewhere, is transmitting something all over the world. Its a real thing - imagine somebody with the morse key or reel-to-reel tape deck in the middle of Namibia desert, runing its shortwave transmitter off the diesel generator and sending a music or messages towards ionosphere. Does not get any spiritual than that in the middle of the night!

While the buzzer is on its resurrection process, there is what to consider meanwhile:

- First, and possibly most rewarding solution, is to aquire a shortwave receiver of your own. You can get a decent one from eBay for about $30. The $10 pricetag from garage sale will get you going as well, be sure that it works tho. I will write a longer article about selecting the receiver later. Those legal to drink are encouraged to take a glass with your favorite liquor with you. Turn off the lights and start exploring. I assure you, its worth it!

- My Conet Radio feed was not the most popular one, as seemingly not many like to listen to a mystery in a yar. So I kill the feed. What I replace it with, is a "weekly special" of the radio stations possible to receive here. I would not limit it to shortwave as there is plenty of options out there starting from fancy satellite repeater transmissions, meteorological maps received through the air, lightning strikes (yes, you can listen to them with radio!) etc. I promise I will try being creative.

- Surprisingly, internet is also providing some nice resources for shortwave listening. The one I like most, is located at WebSDR.org. It is a portal to the growing list of various radios around the world. While each of them is giving you ony a certain frequency span on shortwave amateur band, it is possibly as good as it gets in the web by concept! The best equipped is the site at the University of Twente, Nethrlands, aparently at the lab of the  Pieter-Tjerk de Boer (PA3FWM), the guy who has created the whole concept in a first place.

And of course there is Globaltuners with its receivers around the world.
Word of caution - Hamsphere.com IS NOT an online shortwave listening station. It is good if you want to become (or are) a radio amateur and fancy using internet instead of actual trancievers and antenna. It simulates the shortwave interferences and stations quite convincingly, but it has no connection to real world whatsoever. It is sort of "Second Life of radio bands".

So, lets hope the UVB-76 will return soon, I will meanwhile set up something else to listen at!

Video stream offline for next 8 hours

The video window has run for 12 hours now and seems to behave nicely. However, without further testing, I will not probably have a good night sleep when I am not sure its 100% stable and does not attempt anything funny meanwhile, so I will take it down for a night and put back tomorrow morning.

Streamer WinradHD screen now online

The faithful ICom R-20 has been replaced with Soft66Lite SDR for quite some time, so is now the picture at the blog. 

Thanks to Mat, who gave me an hint about ManyCam, the WirdahHD screen is now live! 

It broadcasts through Stickam and does not have a smoothest video response one could wish, but if you click and zoom in, it will give you quite nice overview of what is going on at and near the UVB-76 spectrum.

One thing tho - the shouthcast is buffering about a minute worth of audio in order to guarantee skip-less playback of the audio. Therefore the streams are 1 minute behind the WinradHD screen. You are _receiveing_ the signal almost realtime, but your player is playing from the buffer. There are hacks around to disable this buffer, but they are really complicated. 

Then again - if you see morse or anything else interesting passing by on the video, you have this 60 seconds to start your recorder! :)

Maintenance still ongoing

Apparently the maintenance is still in progress. As the guys are working hard there, some of the intercom has gone on UVB-76 frequency. Here is a recording made earlier by one of stream listeners (I havent confirmed it yet, but sounds genuine). It translates word by word: "[I am] on site, working, but she is weak".
The Little Swans Dance has returned as well, so the calibration seems to be in progress.

All the best wishes to the maintenance crew!

UVB-76 playing MUSIC!

Everybody please switch to USB feed now! The maintenance guys have style - it plays Swan's Lake before each test run! Please find the recording here.

Maintenance going on at UVB-76

It really seems that the 8.05am Moscow time shutdown was because of long day of maintenance works ahead at the station! It came back live on 22.20UTC with almost inaudible signal, but 1kHz off the usual frequency, on 4626kHz. Then it adjusted frequency twice in 500Hz increments - see the picture of the WinradHD screen about the last change after which it is on its normal frequency.

No UVB-76 transmission can be received

UPDATE: So, its true - UVB-76 has stopped the transmission on September 1, 2010 4.05amUTC just like that - last buzz and all static after that. Pease find the archive recording here.

If this is the end of it or will the UVB-76 return to its regular transmissions is difficult to speculate. It is clear however, that it is not an atmospheric or propagation issue at the moment.

[OLD POSTING: The buzzing has been absent for quite some time now. Report sais, that on August 31, 23.27UTC the carrier switched off and has not re-appeared since.

Currently there is no sign of any carrier frequency on WinradHD screen. On this time of day the atmospheric conditions should allow reception even with the very bad propagation conditions, so it is highly unusual to not have any signal.

I will seek it out from archive and post the recording of the signal stopping, lets hope that it will re-appear!]