Nowadays people rarely use radios. But a couple of decades ago, radios of various models were in every home, and some of them did not turn off around the clock. What did you listen to? Basically - music, educational programs. But quite often the signals slipped on the air, least of all reminiscent of the habanera from "Carmen" or a lecture on life on Mars. The sources of most of these signals have not yet been determined, and that's what we'll talk about in this article.
ENIGMA 2000
There were so many strange, one might even say, mysterious signals on the air that a special organization was even created to study them - the so-called "European Association for Tracking and Collecting Information about Number Stations" or ENIGMA 2000. Number stations here mean sources of unknown signals … Since their location cannot be established, these stations are simply assigned a letter designation according to the broadcasting language and a number. The language is indicated by the following letters:
E - English;
G - German;
S - Polish, Russian;
V - all other languages;
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M - Morse code.
X - the so-called "noise", that is, a station that broadcasts tones of different heights, or just sound.
So, let's start with the XM station or, as it is also unofficially called, the music station back to front. Its signals do look like music played backwards, but that's where the similarities end. Interestingly, there are two sources of "music". One is clearly located in Europe, the second is somewhere in the United States. Who and what broadcasts, as we understand it, is not clear. By the way, the same frequencies at which the "music" sounds are used by the US Navy.
Another source of strange signals is the XF code, and is called the mixer, since it had the property of fading out and then reinforcing again. The signal sounded for 30 years without interruption, but in 2001 it suddenly disappeared and did not appear on the air again. According to some assumptions, its source was located on the territory of the British military base Mildenhall, located, in fact, in Great Britain. Perhaps this signal was part of the secret communications system of NATO troops during the Cold War.
This is "W-w-w" for a reason …
Our next hero is "Buzzbox" or S28 according to the ENIGMA 2000 code system. "Buzzbox" filled a very small part of the airwaves with its unobtrusive buzz, starting from the late 1970s and early 1980s and was interrupted only three times over the past decades. During breaks, a male voice in Russian called different names. It is possible that "Zhuzhzhalka" is also from the Cold War period, but from the Soviet side.
Similarly to the "Buzzbox" there is also a "Pischalka" station under the code S30. As we understand from the name, the signal given by this station is just a squeaking sound, but quite often it is interrupted by messages in Russian, which usually contain a long list of numbers and questions: “How can you hear? Reception. " However, there were no answers about "how do you hear?" however, no.
Another "Russian trace" on the air was left by a station called "Workshop" or XW. Over the years, radio amateurs have caught only a few of her signals. These signals were like a microphone left on in some workshop - footsteps, hammering and conversations in Russian were heard.
"The exact time …" - yes, there is such a signal, more precisely, almost the same. ENIGMA classification - M21. Messages that are sent every 50 seconds usually have 14 digits and time signals that correspond to one of several time zones. Since all the belts that the station sounded are located on the territory of Russia, it is believed that this signal is also given by a Russian radio station, possibly belonging to air defense systems.
There are also a couple of funny signals, perhaps not even related to the military. This is, first of all, the "Slot machine" or XSL, which really sounds like a "one-armed bandit". Most often it was caught in the Far East, and there is an assumption that the signal is still a military one, and its source is the Japanese Imperial Navy.
Another signal - an unpretentious, but at the same time round-the-clock, meowing on the air that had been heard for many years - sounded until the early 2000s, but then it disappeared somewhere. Perhaps the cat is just tired of meowing.
An even stranger signal is called XWP or "Wop-wop" - this is how the British depicted automatic shots. The signal really looks like an automatic burst, but as if its sound had been slowed down several times. Usually "queues" are heard by radio amateurs from southern England and there is a suspicion that these signals are definitely not military, but just a part of the French alerts about sea tides. But no one has yet confirmed this.
And one of the most mysterious stations - S06 or "Russian Man" - has a specific schedule for days, weeks and months. He is engaged in dictating in the voice of Levitan a cipher consisting of only numbers.
Visitor from Ashtar
Miracles work not only on radio. Television is also rich in mysterious signals. For example, on November 26, 1977, British television calmly broadcast the latest (not the most sensational) news. The broadcast was abruptly interrupted by a strange "mechanical voice" which, in the purest English language, informed viewers that he was an alien named Vrillon from the Ashtar Galactic Command. Who is this Vrillon, and where the notorious Ashtar is located - it was not possible to find out. The voice appeared and disappeared.
In November (again in November), but already in 1987 in the United States, someone broke into the broadcast of the WGN-TV channel in Chicago. The unknown, who, albeit vaguely, but still could be seen on the screen, with the help of the credits announced that his name was Max Headrum. Then, for several minutes, the credits conveyed some kind of nonsense, while there was no sound. Then the joker disappeared and was never caught.
Interestingly, Max Headrum is a character in a TV movie released in the UK two years before this event. In this TV movie, that was the name of the TV presenter, generated using computer technology.
Konstantin Fedorov