Apr 23

Shortwave number stations

Filed under: Radio — Matthew Revell at 11:03 am

BBC Radio 4 has just broadcast a fascinating programme about shortwave number stations.

I used to hear these, as a child, but never grasped how exciting they were. English, German, Spanish and all sorts of other voices reading numbers, seemingly in some sort of sequence, sitting beneath the static. Others were in Morse code or started with electronic music, similar to a Stylophone or musical doorbell.

Radio 4’s Tracking the Lincolnshire Poacher takes its name from one of the better known number stations. It begins with the folk tune The Lincolnshire Poacher, played on musical doorbell, then continues with a sequence of numbers read in a sampled British woman’s voice. I think it’s a shame that, recently, the station was tracked down to an RAF base in Cyprus; takes some of the mystery out of it. It does, though, give weight to commonly held belief that number stations are government communications to spies in the field.

BBC Radio 4’s The Lincolnshire Poacher listen again.

4 Responses to “Shortwave number stations”

  1. Anonymous says:
    April 23rd, 2005 at 3:27 pm

    This programme was inspired by The Conet Project; the Rosetta Stone of Numbers Stations. The BBC cannot promote CDs (unless the fistful of fivers has been handed over of course :-) ) and so if you want to investigate the package and book that started it all off, there is the link. An endlessly fascinating subject, that throws up more questions than it answers.

  2. Stuart Langridge says:
    April 25th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
  3. catkins says:
    November 24th, 2006 at 2:16 pm

    i heard R4 show: fascinating and a bit scary!

    does anyone know of a good (recent?) book on number stations?

    thanks

  4. Tom says:
    December 6th, 2006 at 1:18 pm

    Catkins

    The Wikipedia article (link in the first line of Matthew’s article) gives references up to at least 2004 and various websites.