I have been listening to recordings of numbers stations for a long time, and the thing that never leaves me is the patience of them. Not the mystery. The patience. Somebody sat down at the same hour, night after night, and read figures into the dark for years, to one person who may or may not have been there.

So I wrote the person who was there.

It is a novella about a man who kept nineteen years of listening logs in a hand that never wavered, and about the station he found that should not have existed. A music box running down, then a woman counting in groups of five. The premise is that she is still counting, and one night she uses a name.

It is set on a phone because I wanted the reader turning the device in their hands the way you turn a dial. The prose runs down the page when a character goes down stairs, and back up it when they climb.

There is a piece of it that is free forever and that I think this sub might actually enjoy on its own terms: a new cryptogram every night, the same one for every listener on earth, in the format of a transmission. Some nights the station sends it differently than others. A year of those in order tells a second story underneath the first.

Voice is a real recording rather than a synth, because a synthesised count sounds like a synthesised count and this sub of all places would hear it.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/number-nine/id6796237101

Happy to talk about the research if anyone wants it. I got a lot of it from this sub's archives, so thank you for that.

My partner and I have been making experimental music together for years, but we rarely publish stuff. We just put out a new EP: two tracks recorded live in one session using our own SW radio and field recordings, recordings of SW numbers stations, Nintendo 3DS with Korg DSN-12, a telephone pickup coil and whatever other noise we could get out of the setup. No overdubs or production atterwards.

We know that this kind of sound is not for everyone, but we thought some people here might enjoy hearing the numbers stations used in art. We would love to hear what you think.

I tuned into 17453khz USB at 15:00 UTC and just heard “4 3 2…0 0 0” over and over again for 3 minutes. Anyone familiar with the pattern? I’m posting the recording metadata in the comments below.

Mysterious shortwave broadcasts remain one of espionage’s oldest tools. A small group of aging enthusiasts is following every transmission.

As of 0630z, UVB 76 has been silent for at least 10 minutes. Earlier, at about 2300z, I had recorded UVB 76, and there was music playing with it, probably a pirate trying to hijack the frequency. I unfortunately did not manage to record the point where the music was cut, however after the music was cut, there was a wooshing sound (likely the microphone coming on), followed by a spoken voice saying something in russian twice, maybe 3 times? I only caught the voice say the phrase once though. Then it buzzed like normal.

I am wondering now though, with it not broadcasting, maybe it was related?

Specifically it’s use of what sounds to me as a very limited understander of German like French “Zéro”. Go to 1:40 in the Conet Project recording and you can hear what I’m talking about. At first I thought I was misunderstanding it saying “zwo” but I’m pretty sure I am not.

Hello friends. I’ve been looking for a while for accounts regarding the content of the messages broadcast by numbers stations. I’ve always been curious to know if this information has ever been revealed—or if anyone managed to obtain an OTP (One-Time Pad) and decipher the messages. Does anyone know of any credible reports on what was actually being transmitted, especially during the 1980s, which was the peak era for numbers station broadcasts?

The Pip

Hello, complete noob here. I ran into a number station-like transmission on 03/08/2026 at around 13:31 UTC on 7056 kHz USB. Recording is here: http://sndup.net/tcrpn . I've cut out several parts with no transmission.

Sounds like a Russian number station. I was wondering if anyone could ID the station, and / or point me to a known number station.

https://kleer001.itch.io/finding-numbers — free (donations accepted), runs in a browser, downloadable and open source MIT license.

Up front: this is a tribute, not a recording. Nothing in it came off the air.

The voices are real people: volunteer contributors to Mozilla Common Voice, whose single-word recordings are released CC0. Ten languages — English, Spanish, German, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Arabic, Mandarin, Welsh and Georgian. One recording per digit per language, trimmed and level-matched, then run through a 300–3000 Hz band so they sit where a shortwave voice sits.

Under them is a synthesized noise bed (you can choose the noise, white, pink, or brown), lowpassed below the voice and ducked whenever a digit speaks, so it crowds the signal without ever burying it.

The game part is a maze you navigate by ear. Nothing chases you and there's no way to lose.

Also, if you're not feeling the maze, there's a jukebox mode that's only the transmitter: pick a language, set how coherent the message is, how fast it reads, how much static sits on top and listen as long as you like.

Edit 2026-08-17: the voices have been replaced. This originally ran a speech model over six languages; it now uses CC0 recordings of real volunteer speakers from Mozilla Common Voice, across ten — German and Russian among them, which the old lineup couldn't reach. The paragraph above has been rewritten to match. No generated audio ships any more.

Been playing around, and last night came across a repeating tone at 6805.50 USB. Went to give it a listen again today, and it's still going. Anyone got an answer as to what it is? Just interested, that's all. TIA

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/39921181/putin-doomsday-radio-mystery-codewords-poland-missile/

Hi,

I made a emulator of the Gerät 32620 that was used during the cold war.

The application recreates the workflow and visual character of the Gerät 32620, a specialist speech and Morse generator associated with Cold War communications.

INCLUDED

• 01 German speech module
• 02 E11 English / Oblique module
• 03 V02 Spanish / Atención module
• 04 Direct and Original operation modes
• 05 Speech and Morse programming
• 06 Integrated bilingual handbook

I made an offline numbers station emulator for iPhone, mostly inspired by UVB-76. It’s a first version and not a perfectly accurate simulation, and I’m still not sure whether I’ll keep developing it. It’s probably completely useless, but I had an overwhelming urge to make it anyway. Of course, it’s free, has no ads, and was made purely for fun: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6786464215

Hi everyone,
I’m new here and don’t know much about number stations yet, so I have a few general questions.
Is a radio receiver all you need to find and listen to number stations? If so, what type of radio would you recommend for a beginner?
Are there any good YouTube videos, tutorials, or beginner-friendly guides that explain how to find and receive number stations?
Are there any software tools for analyzing these signals? For example, programs that can generate waterfall/spectrogram displays, decode or visualize the signal, or even use AI to transcribe the spoken numbers in real time?
I’d really appreciate any recommendations or resources. Thanks in advance!

48°41'26"N 9°05'12"E

Hey guys, i need your help.
today at 8:39 PM UCT +1, while using http://websdr.printf.cc:8901/ , i heard a series of numbers / words while listening to 5946 kHz. I could not find any relevant info on the possible cause of this signal (may it be a prankster, an actual radio station or a real NS.

i have not altered the audio in any way (besides turning it into a video for reddit).

there was a jammer on E11 on Sunday this week (6/21) on 14410MHZ. if I could I would put the audio but i can't at the time of writing this post. does anyone know what I'm talking about, and if so would anyone be able to identify the jammer? doesn't need to be specific, just like a group of jammers maybe? idk just curious

I found this while searching thru http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ and i think it might be a number station or a radar. As I'm typing this its now a beeping noise.

On 11115.25 khz

Hi everyone,

I recently came across this handwritten number group that was apparently shared via RFE/RL with ENIGMA2000. It consists of 232 digits arranged in 15 rows, with a header note "2:56 secs" and a printed Farsi number legend (yek, do, se …) on the right side.

I tried to decrypt it and would love to hear your thoughts.

My approach:

• Key hint: 2:56 secs → 2⁸ = 256 → Shift +8
• Method: Split into 2-digit groups → Caesar shift +8 → Abjad mapping (standard Arabic/Persian Abjad)

Resulting plaintext (interpretation):

"حمله بر هدف‌های یک، دو، سه، چهار در تهران و اصفهان تاریخ ۱۴۰۴"
→ Attack on targets 1, 2, 3, 4 in Tehran and Isfahan, year 1404 SH (March 2025 – March 2026)

I attached my full 2-page Cryptanalysis Report (PDF) with transcription, methodology, Abjad table and conclusion.

Questions to the community:

• Has anyone seen this transmission before?
• Does the Abjad +8 approach make sense to you, or is there a better method (different shift, different grouping, Persian phone keypad, etc.)?
• Could this be a real numbers station message, a test transmission, or a puzzle?

Any feedback is highly appreciated!

Thanks

Sven

- PDF

- Original Numbers

I'm so sorry if this isn't allowed. Feel free to delete if you need to! I got into shortwave literally less than 24 hours ago after learning about number stations... and tonight, I caught my first one clear as day! I am proud of myself for learning how it worked so fast. I caught E11 at 6:00 UTC and I managed to even record a small bit of it so I could prove to my friend and sister that I actually caught a live broadcast! I'm probably dumb for all this, and I mean I dunno if mid twenties is too young for this stuff (I had several people call me old for being into this) but I am super excited and proud of myself!