Everything You Should Know About Secret Numbers Stations & How To Listen

I work for the government (not an intelligence agency obviously) and the idea of a bunch of civil servants having a meeting to decide on which horrifying jingle they will broadcast on their spy station makes me smile 😊

I got the secret message that you sent me, Lewis, but I don’t know where I’m going to find water skis, two liters of mayonnaise and a typewriter, at this time of the night. 😂

My father worked in COMSEC with the USAF. He introduced me to SW and explained what the number stations were. It is still the safest way to get info to an agent or spy located in unfriendly territory as receiving stations are hard to detect and being portable are moved enough to not create a pattern which with detection would point to a specific person. It's also used for military purposes. It will likely be around awhile because it uses simple common gear which anyone anywhere might have.

The last broadcast by the "Gong Station" is kinda interesting. Its the German nursery rhyme "Alle meine Entchen" (All my little ducklings). The text is: "All my little ducklings swin in the sea, dive head under water and put the tail in the air." I might have been a joke as well as final instructions to tell their agents to go into hiding and pretend to be someone else in public since they are for their own now.

I can get a hold of some broadcasting equipment. I think I'll start my own number station! We'll keep the numbers between 30 and 90, just for the hell of it, and read them off in random order in sets of five. Every now and then it will be in Spanish. In between we'll run the vacuum cleaner.

There were lots of these stations in the 70s when I was a radio operator in the Military. Number stations often sent messages with the same interval each day even if they didnt have any information to the agents. That way it was harder to find out if there was increased activity or not.

I'd have been freaked the eff out if I'd been scanning through radio frequencies and found the Lincolnshire Poacher. Late at night, you're alone with your radio and out of the static comes that looped melody. Even right now, watching this video, knowing what it (probably) is still unsettles me. It's perfectly eerie.

When the government says that you shouldn't be interested in listening to something then that's when you 100% should be listening to whatever it is

I came across the number stations by a coincidence when I was probably 9 or 10 years old, so about 30 years ago, in former Czechoslovakia. It was a summer evening and I turned on my old radio to tune up some interesting radio stations from around the world, when I tuned to a station with a czech female voice saying random numbers. I was quite shocked, because it was a bit mysterious, so I told my dad to listen to it and I asked him what it was. The transmission ended in a minute and my dad, who looked really uninterested, told me it was something like a transmitter test. I remember I tried to tune to that station for several weeks, without any luck. It took me about 20 years to find out it was a number station (and what number station is) and there were a lot of other similar stations as well. And this topic still is for me still fascinating.

Radio oddities are what pulled me in the hobby so many years ago. Living in a very remote area in Québec. Canada, it was very interesting to listen to shorts waves transmission on the long months of winter. The colder it was, the better. Reception was better when we could saw auroras boreal. That was in the latest 70's early 80's. I still have the old Hammarlund HQ 180A that I used back then. With a long wire antenna at 100 fts in the air. It measures exactly 160 meters. It's old but very efficient. These videos are very interesting.

As a kid I scanned the SW bands using the radio in a huge Grundig Majestic monophonic console. I'd heard every example you've played in this and previous vids. I knew they were secret messages. But I never knew who was sending them. Now I know. Thanks! :)

2:40 They thought "illegal to listen to" would appease the public's curiosity? Lol Probably increased the sales of SW by ten fold.

I remember listening to number stations as a teenager 40 years ago. Always wondered who the transmissions were meant for. We knew they were cold war stuff but that was about all we knew. Great content Lewis, thank you for sharing 👍

The Vernam cipher is definitely breakable if you're not very careful about how you use it. The Germans found this out the hard way in WWII when Bletchley Park broke their Lorenz cipher (the Brits called it 'tunny') using the Colossus. Vernam ciphers are subject to cracking by statistical analysis if the sender makes any error whatsoever.

To be fair, the biggest shock to me was mention of Latvia. Like we are not known for anything. 😂

I absolutely love the number station series. So well researched and presented. I find it strangely captivating for some reason I cannot fathom.

This is a good general introduction to number stations. New shortwave listeners will be amazed that they can find number stations using an inexpensive pocket radio they may already own. Thanks!

The strangest numbers station I heard as a kid in the 1970s was a man speaking numbers into a microphone in Spanish, but after every group the transmitter would turn off then turn back on again to read the next group. Apparently he was using a regular push-to-talk AM transceiver, probably modified ham or CB gear. The amateurism of this station made me think it was run by a drug cartel or some criminal operation.

I don't know why, but hearing numbers stations has always raised my hackles in a way that no other scary thing ever can. It's a visceral reaction that sets off my lizard brain.

The Oblique station (around 17:00) used the word 'fiver' - as far as I know, that's never been used in a phonetic alphabet - it was 'fiyuv' for 5, and 'niner' for 9. That grabbed my attention (ex-radioman here).