VLF Experience

Yesterday morning the mistaken frequency field in PRIYOM scheduler made the prijemnik receiver to tune on to 0kHz for a while.

As there was a thunderstorm in progress (quite surprising for mid-September) the result was a beautiful display of EMI scattering, when surplus electrical fields discharged. The sound was more or less like a dolphin song, too bad I did not have a recorder on to provide an audio sample ..

The horizontal line at the bottom of the screen is a lightning strike happening, but please also pay attention to the very clear and neat VLF transmission happening at 18kHz region. This is likely a submarine communication and sounded like any other RTTY modulation.

Surprisingly, my magnetic loop antenna design seems to work very well down to the VLF region, making it a really nice and compact exploration tool as indoor urban antenna. The long aerial outside was absolutely mute below 50kHz and did not display any sign of VLF transmission other than static.

Beta-testing the PRIYOM.org scheduled feed

It has been for talks too long already, but the live Number Stations Radio is now here! The way it works is, that our number station community at PRIYOM.org has taken a number station broadcast schedules from ENIGMA 2000, their own monitoring results, hints and findings from other places, and created a fantastic Number Stations Google calendar based on this information.

The result is a comprehensive list of daily transmissions, and it is only logical progression to create a live, self-tuning feed based on this information! The main streaming resource is the new prijemnik justin.tv feed at http://justin.tv/prijemnik and unlike its UVB-76 counterpart, this feed comes with the audio. The mp3/shoutcast streaming feed is up and running as well, but as the shoutcast streams have around 20 second lag with most players because of buffering, justin.tv makes more sense this time.

It will still take a while for this feed to make out from the beta phase. Please do not expect it to be up and running all the time in upcoming months, as it is still working from my development desktop and shares the development SDR MK1 radio.

Please also note, that the entries with the duration marked as 555 seconds are actually 1 hour off, so the message is actually going to be transmitted one hour EARLIER than scheduler shows. (The time zone mathematics for the google calendar files are pain to implement and still take some time ..)
[Update 14.09.2011: Scheduler bugs should be more or less fixed now]

Meanwhile, enjoy listening to static and you will get some numbers read to you every once and a while! :) 

UVB-76 - Under a different callsign again - 94ZhT

It was almost exactly a year ago, on September 8, 2011 when UVB-76 (or UZB-76 really, as it was operating then) changed its name to MDZhB. Not sure if there is a system behind it, but today the station broadcasted its messge on 11.30UTC with different callsign once again - 94ZhT.

Here's the clip:

Another outstanding piece of UVB-76 music!

If for nothing else, then the UVB-76 transmitters have been worth keeping warm for inspiring people. And as the sound is what the transmitter sends, the most popular art form is of course music! :)

I think I absolutely have to create a page of UVB-76 inspired art and music for this site, as there are some pieces what are really spectacular what I have been collecting over time and what have been sent to me.

The latest discovery is the oldschool techno track what is definitely worth the floors some place Ibiza!