I knew of these previously but it's something that I developed an interest in from playing C.O.D. Black Ops, which also brought an interest in Espionage and spying etc.

For those not familiar, the theory is that Number Stations were used by Governments to communicate with their spies around the world without arising suspicion.

After doing a bit of digging for books or some more information on Number Stations I found this old recording of a documentary on BBC R4 regarding one of the most famous (or should that be infamous?) 'Stations "The Lincolnshire Poacher".


Since then I've tried to find more information about Cold War espionage but I'm really struggling, there aren't many books on the subject and there's little point starting to build a radio set up to listen in as most of the Number Stations are no longer active, The Lincolnshire Poacher included.

What I find fascinating is that if it is true that Number Stations are in fact actually used for communicating spies, it's the fact that it's going on with (almost) the whole world completely oblivious to what's being said in these messages. We don't know what they're saying and never will. I know this will probably bring out the conspiracy theorists on here but I was wondering if anyone else on here is into this sort of thing?

 

When I was a radio Op in the army we use to have whole conversations over the radio using letters and numbers in blocks of 2. it was called Batco but was very slow as you had to encode your message completely first then decode the reply completely using numbered pages. But it was interesting once you learnt how to use it.

 

Isnt RTTY a similar sort of thing?

That used to be broadcast quite regularly, mind you i havnt llisteded to a radio in years,


I had a friend who tried to decode it once, cant remember if it worked or not lol.

sometimes it used to be nice scrolling through an analog radio, just to hear the various frequencies being recieved, you dont get that with digital sadly


Mart

 

Not forgetting MAPCO and Slidex.

 

There's loads of HAM radio enthusiast recordings on YouTube, it's a slit lay creepy thing that what is random numbers is actually a hidden message for someone somewhere.

According to what I've read, if used properly a number transmission is impossible to decipher as the one time key is just that, to be used once and then a new key used for the next transmission. The pay off of course is that for the man or woman at the other end it's one sided. I did read of the only time a number station transmission was decrypted as the users had not used the one time key properly and it was the recipients handler complaining about their expenses lol