N2SAG,  A REGULAR Liberty Net participant, has produced this excellent video looking at the increasingly popular phenomenon of restoring high-fidelity broadcast equipment for use on the ham bands.
 

by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

AN ELECTRONICS collector in Germany has created a series of videos showing us the actual hardware used in the at once ubiquitous and mysterious “spy numbers” stations emanating on shortwave from Cuba (even today) and from Eastern Bloc nations (during the Cold War).

Apparently the technology used by the ’80s consisted of digital voice samples on EEPROMs, and paper tape (of the same kind used in my high school computer lab circa 1972) for the actual encoded messages.

Back in 1989, some jokester put on a faux “spy numbers” station on 7425 kHz (and a few other frequencies) that sent messages read by an accented female announcer consisting of Mexican food items instead of Spanish numbers — “Attencion — taco… burrito… tamale… tamale… nacho… — final… final…” Hilarious.

Here are the six videos followed by the original author’s commentary:

Commentary from the video producer:

“This machine pronounces, in a monotone voice, a string of numbers used by intelligence agencies for one-way shortwave radio communication with their agents in enemy countries. This machine belongs to a German collector who has a vast collection of various spy gadgets. There were many machines of this particular model produced in East Germany for usage within the DDR itself or other Communist bloc nations, like the Soviet Union or Cuba.

“The printed circuit boards only contains the voice samples of the lady pronouncing numbers in either German or Spanish. The EEPROMs never contain the actual message. For a message to be put in the machine a paper tape was used that not only contained the actual message intended for the agent, but also (coding that determined) the number of times this message should be repeated by the machine.

“The Speech/morse generator can also change the speed at which the pronunciation occurs, giving the voice a slightly higher or lower pitch.”

by Kevin Strom, WB4AIO

W1WCR’s new antenna — a 165-foot doublet held up by 100-foot pine trees — provided even more intense signals than usual for this week’s session of the Liberty Net.

Conversations on the historic current events discussion net ranged from the hidden aspects of politics to spy numbers stations to shortwave radio propagation and the mysteries of women.

Here is a small sampling of what you’ll hear on this week’s recording:

• New York City schools have come up with an innovative way to close the “racial achievement gap” — they simply give partial credit for wrong answers. (2 hours 44 minutes)

• According to a story in the European Union Times, the Gulf oil spill may be the greatest ecological disaster ever to occur in human history, threatening — according to a Russian intelligence report made to President Medvedev — to cause massive destruction to all eastern North America, largely due to highly toxic so-called “dispersants.” (1 hour 35 minutes)

• Does the self-styled elite have an agenda to depopulate large parts of the United States? (1 hour 41 minutes)

• Why have robotic submersibles not been sent down to investigate the actual cause of the downing of the Deep Water Horizon? (1 hour 48 minutes)

• What was Congress thinking when, years ago, they allowed BP to have sweetheart “limited liability” legislation for its operations in the Gulf? Would new legislation assigning more liability to them be unconstitutional as an ex post facto law? (1 hour 54 minutes)

• The current American economic depression is a result of drunken spending being financed by drunken lending — with the end result being that both spenders and lenders go broke. The Washington regime thinks it can solve this problem with more drunken spending. (2 hours 6 minutes)

• The mysteries of shortwave propagation are in some ways comparable to the mysteries of women. (2 hours 34 minutes)

• For the first time since the fall of Communism, the actual equipment used to generate “spy numbers” signals has been disclosed. It’s all on a series of videos which you can find linked on http://3950.net (2 hours 36 minutes)

• Solid state hard drives provide an astonishing performance increase compared to their conventional counterparts. (2 hours 41 minutes)

This week’s Net was helped by good propagation, and brief attempts at jamming were completely ineffective.

You can listen to the Liberty Net every Saturday night on or around 3950 kHz (usually within 10 kHz) beginning at 10PM Eastern Time.

My personal thanks go out to all of those who make the Net what it is, especially W1WCR, N2SAG, and N2IRJ.