For those who don't know what they are there's a definition here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_station .

I picked one up on my regular old Grundig mini-world radio last night, and after it went on for a few minuted I figured I'd get a recording of it. after a while I just lost interest but it's pretty creepy.

http://myfreefilehosting.com/f/1c45410b39_18.38MB

There are many discussion boards and web sites dedicating to finding out what the numbers actually mean. While they are referenced to a code/cypher book on the other end of the receiving station (IE 2,6,7,1,9,0 is what we hear, they decode that string in a book) so we will actually never know, at least not for now, what it means.

What you REALLY want to listen out for are the "Skyking" messages. These are nuclear "go/don't go" codes.

I occasionally wonder if some of the number stations are not actually sending code... but infact just sending random stuff for the hell of it...

Perhaps some kind of vanity of broadcasting random stuff and having all sorts of forums start talking about it and what it could mean... A shadow in a spotlight... but no one there?

They very likely are sending just random stuff at some points, but not just for the hell of it. Like any code used for covert communications, you'd want to mix it in with other junk so that it all appears to be random and garbled. The person with the key to the code would know when it's just random numbers, and when it's not.

They actually do send random numbers and strings, from time to time. They are usually to prep the (legitimate) receiving station to make sure they are on the right number count, and some are, just sent as random to throw off the enemy. You are correct.

What you REALLY want to listen out for are the "Skyking" messages. These are nuclear "go/don't go" codes.

Not really. They're pretty general announcements. In USAF training, if they call and it matches the code your group was given, you turn around and head back, for example.

That's not to say that it couldn't be used at some point for a gocode.

Not really. They're pretty general announcements. In USAF training, if they call and it matches the code your group was given, you turn around and head back, for example.

That's not to say that it couldn't be used at some point for a gocode.

Can't really speak for the Air Force, but my understanding of the Navy is that you'll never so much as hear that you'd be allowed to access launch info until you have a bird on your shoulder from the officer corps, or you have a 7th stripe if you're in the enlisted corps.

I could be wrong about that, though. I'm not going to claim that I know about such things.

4 8 15 16 23 42

4 8 15 16 23 42

I LOVED that show

I LOVED that show

Me too.

would it be possible for a operator, or 3, to triangulate their issuance points?

Yeah, it took me a minute to find but there's a pretty interesting paragraph on wikipedia

"Also, several articles in the radio magazine Popular Communications published in the 1980s and early 1990s described hobbyists using portable radio direction-finding equipment to locate numbers stations in Florida and in the Warrenton, Virginia, area.[9] From the outside, they spotted the station's antenna inside a military facility. The station hunter speculated that the antenna's transmitter at the facility was connected by a telephone wire pair to a source of spoken numbers in the Washington, D.C., area. The author said the Federal Communications Commission would not comment on public inquiries about American territory numbers stations."

How the fuck do you get this to play on windows? There's no .xxx to identify.

It did the same thing when I tried, just use 'open with' browse to C:\program files\windows media player or wherever and then use windows media player

It's not much to listen to, 'uno cinco cinco cinco quatro etc...'

The fact that encoded messages are being sent at all tells the enemy something, so you send random garbage when you're not sending messages to obscurify the amount of encoded traffic.