WinXP shutdown sound after an E25a transmission on 9450 kHz

Today there was a transmission on 9450 kHz at 1313z. The strange thing was, while being an E25a transmission (which means no message body), the YL said "Message" three times, and continued to call "785 46". Usually, a runaway "Message" can be heard during E25a messages but in the end of the transmission. After calling "785 46" a couple of times, the YL said "Message" twice, and the WinXP shutdown sound was heard.

Here is the recording of the full transmission.

E25 transmissions today on 9450 kHz

This day we had three E25 transmissions, all on 9450 kHz.

Here are the message details and recordings:

1st transmission:
1219 UTC Carrier in progress
1228 UTC The song "Arouh Le Min" from Umm Kulthum was heard
1230 UTC Th YL started calling "555", with irregular spaces between numbers, sometimes the numbers are not "spoken" as a whole.

1232 UTC "Message" x3
9104 6031 8741 0413 3253 8882 6157 7803 8487 0312
8828 2497 8741

1235 UTC "Rebeat" x3
1237 UTC "End of message, end of transmission"

Recording (note, I accidentally switched to USB)

2nd transmission:
1242 UTC Carrier
1244 UTC YL calling "440"
1245 UTC "Message" x3
8237 4031 4710 2377 1161 8115 5905 2141 0105 3069
1730 7939 4710

1248 UTC Pause till 1249 UTC, then "Rebeat" x3
1252 UTC Ended with "EOM" only, carrier QRT at 1308 UTC

Recording

3rd transmission:
1342 UTC Music, "Arouh Le Min"
1345 UTC YL calling "227 17, 220 18 19 20, 222" irregular spaces between numbers
1350 UTC "222" repeated, then "Message" x3
5279 4411 0810 5897 2744 2999 2440 4217 0585 4482
0810

Recording

Note that during the third transmission, a BC station was on the same frequency, but here in my QTH, E25 is much stronger (+20dB or +30dB, while the BC station peaks S7)

Hooray! A new edition of rfax.pdf from NOAA!

I just noticed the existence of a newer edition (9 Feb 2011) of NOAA's HF fax guide. Because it took me ages to download it from their site, here is a copy of it!

E25 today on 9450 kHz

Hello,

This is the 1230 UTC E25 transmission on 9450 kHz recorded in AM mode. The young lady has a variable rhythm. I suspect that the operators switched to Windows XP since there are reports of that particular OS sounds accidentally escaping to the airwaves. This may be the reason for the varying speech speed.

Nowadays there are more reports of E25 on 9450 kHz probably due to the improving HF conditions.

Enjoy!

An interesting E25 transmision with an exciting ending

And another surprise from E25!

The transmission began at 1214z on 9450 kHz, with the song "Inte Omri". Then at 1217z, the mechanical young lady, in a faster-than-usual pace, was calling "830 3 835". Then a message to 835 followed:

830 3 835

835 (repeated)

"Message" x3

1020 5555 x19 (an unusual message)

"Repeat"x3 (fast)

"End of message, end of transmission"

Note that the pace was a bit faster, the gaps between phrases/numbers were a bit irregular and the endings of the number "five" were more abrupt than usual.

At 1226z the message ended with the usual "EOM EOT" and then...the Windows XP shutdown sound followed! (And not Windows 98!) After this little surprise, the transmission ended.

Here is (nearly) the whole transmission (A part is missing from the beginning). The "rattling" sound is the digital station who usually interferes E25 when I use AM mode.

So E25 operators upgraded their OS? But yet, the quality of the transmission wasn't as good as expected!

The Buzzer sounds a bit different this evening

The Buzzer (S28) sounds a bit different today, having a higher pitch. This is a recording made today at 1909z, on 4625 kHz, with the receiver in AM mode.

Early E25a on 9450kHz

The YL appeared an hour earlier, at 1115z (it is expected to transmit at 1200z-1400z during winter time) on 9450 kHz, with the E25a message "317 3". A carrier was present since at least 1056z, and had a brief break at 1110z. The transmitter QRT after the end of the message, which ended without "End of message, end of transmission".

Recording.

New edition of rfax.pdf

I just noticed that NOAA has published a new edition of the rfax.pdf which is a guide/schedule for the HF-FAX stations of the world. The guide is dated 13 August 2010.

The Buzzer, with "The Swan's Lake" and with an OM counting live!

This is my first post after a long time. My excitement for what's going on motivated me to finally quit my long silence.

The Buzzer (S28) stopped transmitting two days ago. Since then, several people confirmed its absence. Yesterday I found (among with others) that the familiar buzzing sound was back again.

Moments ago (4625 USB, 1834z), I was lucky to hear a test transmission from S28! An OM counting in Russian, then the buzzing sound and "The Swan's Lake"!

Here is the recording! Enjoy!

The web page http://www.uvb-76.net/ has a live feed from 4625 kHz.

Pedro's buzz: Or what's common between V02a/SK01 and Radio Habana Cuba

It is a nice, sunny morning (with 31 sunspots... yeah!) with Radio Habana Cuba on 6140 kHz, the same frequency as E25. It appears that the few sunspots helped a little bit and RHC is a bit stronger than usual. RHC is the BC QRM I sometimes mention when talking about E25 on 6140 kHz at ~0800z, and it is usually stronger earlier in the mornings. Today I could hear a buzz, something like the 50 Hz (or 60 Hz? What does Pedro use in Cuba? LOL!) and its harmonics.

I thought: "Let's try a V02a frequency" and decided to tune to 5898 kHz. Success! There was the V02a YL calling! A similar buzz like RHC was heard.

A few moments later, the YL stopped and a SK01 transmission occurred! Another surprise! Then the YL was back! This is the SK01 transmission. Near the end of the recording I switched to 6140 kHz for comparison. The following spectrogram image compares the two "buzzes":

The left half is from a silent part of the Radio Habana Cuba transmission while the right part is from V02a. There are more harmonics apparent in the RHC part since its signal was stronger. But they seem to match, don't they? Or I'm seeing "patterns" here, like most of my fellow daydreamers (i.e. Numbers Stations fans)?

Back to daydreaming...

S06 on 9135 kHz this morning; parallel transmission heard in the background

A very strong (+10db) and clean signal this morning on 9135 kHz at 0810z, allowed me to hear the audio of a second, weaker, S06 transmission occurring in the background. Initially I thought that since S06 transmits on 7440 kHz (ID 418) at the same time, maybe it was the audio from that transmission. But after listening more carefully, the second YL calls "471"! This is a sample of what I heard. You can hear the second call (471) easier near the beginning of the message.

Is this common for S06? Who knows...

XC "The Crackle" along with E10 ART

It is the first time I've heard of XC, the so-called "Crackle" on HF. The Crackle is more of a "noise" station than a "numbers" station since its content is unknown...

It is now (0746z) up on 6987 kHz. The E10 station ART on 6986 kHz is causing QRM :-) but this does not trouble me; actually it is a "double pleasure"!

This is a sound sample from 6986 kHz (the E10 ART frequency)

And this is a sample from 6987 kHz, from a bit later, after E10 QRT.

You may also try 5135 kHz, during night.

Frequency plot

Spectrogram

V13 "New Star Broadcasting station" barely audible!

The so-called "New Star Broadcasting station" (ENIGMA: V13) is barely audible right now (1300z) on 11430 kHz. The ICOM R75 is set to USB and the preamp is engaged. This is a sample from the beginning of the transmission, where you can hear the musical intro. The quality isn't so good but still the V13 theme and the YL characteristic rhythm is apparent.

Additional info can be found at:
http://www.cvni.net/radio/nsnl/nsnl038/nsnl38v13.html

A better sound sample can be found at:
http://www.enigma2000.org.uk/

And of course you can take a look at the past E2K Newsletters :-)

The station QRT at about 1330z. If you like, you may try again at 1400z on the same frequency, 11430 kHz. Good luck!

New edition of rfax.pdf HF-FAX guide ... Updated!

Here is the latest (10 September 2009) version of rfax.pdf guide, which is updated. There are less stations listed now, which means that some are no longer transmitting... This is a bit sad...

BTW right now the South Africa ZSJ station has a fair image quality on 18236.10 kHz, USB mode...

E10 on 14000 kHz

E10 is known to transmit on 14000 kHz (exactly at the beginning of the 20m ham band). Last night I got the repeat of a message while listening to the CW portion of the 20m band. Unfortunately I don't know the call (yet).

So this is what's happened yesterday, Thursday 11/06, 2209z, on 14000 kHz USB.
The message was:

m g28 t
ZIFNS OWWLO XJVAE WGPZG MSPTV PORHW QALCX RIHPY XQQMO SBKJI
RMTHL JOOBC NCZAK ZQJYV GJZNR PNQWQ ACJKL WNKMO BPEMR QPMNP
PZKUT ZAJQR OUVBE YNMOA XPCHP UJFLG RHJAT FSFLF
eom eot

UPDATE:
The message belongs to YHF who usually transmits on 2844//3840 kHz at 2200z.
Thanks E10-Agent!

Very odd "sinusoidal" sweep on 6990 kHz

Well, HF is a garden of endless sound varieties.

Now, what's this? Something out of order?

Recorded on 6990 USB, wide filter setinng, at approx. 2109 UTC, S5-S7 signal strength.

A peculiar message from E25 -- accompanied by a new song

It's been more than a week now where E25 plays a new song as an intro theme.

Thanks to our friend Mr. DXer, the song is "Ahbabena ya eeni mahom maana" ("Our lovers are away") from Farid Al-Atrash. But there's more. A short 3-group message was sent to Agent "000" (!) but the operators don't actually want to reveal this peculiar call. Most of the transmissions lack the call part; like having the volume turned down until the moment the machine is ready to say "Message" three times. Then someone turns the volume on.

The procedure goes like this:

• Music ("Our lovers are away") one or more times.
  
• Audio off or very low ("mechanical" YL calling "0 0 0").
• Audio back to normal calling "Message" x 3 as usual,
• 0669 6676 6682,
• "Rebeat" x 3,
• ...
• "End of message, end of transmission"

In most cases it was difficult or impossible to identify the call, but on 21/05/09, they "revealed" it to us. Here's a sound sample recorded on 23/05/09, 0927z, on 6140 kHz. Note that the recording was made in USB and in the beginning of the transmission the carrier was a bit off-frequency. Some other days the song was repeated 2 or 3 times.

Here's a later sound sample where we're not "allowed" to hear the call. As usual the frequency was 6140 kHz. It began earlier, at 0918z then after 3 minutes of blank carrier (which BTW was off-frequency again), the new song was repeated four (!) times. The sound sample is from the last part of the transmission (final repeat of the song plus msg).

Many thanks to Mr. DXer for identifying the song and alerted the E2K Group for this kind of oddity.

Honolulu FAX audible on 16 MHz

Unfortunately I haven't got a decent map from Honolulu HF-FAX service on 16133.10 kHz USB, but I can hear it right now (1830z). My ears can detect the presence of fax signal but the software decoder just gives a very noisy printout.

I managed to log Honolulu on 16133.10 kHz USB this morning at 0715z, and also on 11088.10 kHz but still no clear image reception... While the HF conditions gizmo in my blog says Poor, I wonder if these... 11(!) sunspots makes the difference!

Latest version of rfax.pdf

A new HF-Fax frequency/schedule list is available, dated 24 February 2009. Download it from here.

E10 ABC on 5339 kHz, jammed

ABC was discovered in a FTJ frequency. It is on air right now, on 5339 USB with a nice S8 signal. The strange thing is the existence of the Jammer, at the same frequency but with a weaker signal. How odd! Why to jam a station calling "ABC" and nothing else? Maybe the Jammer knows more about the purpose of ABC, with no messages so far... Here's a short sound sample!