Lo and behold, I heard the famous Russian 7 kHz FSK earlier this morning, below the 40M ham band. I heard the signals, sounding like superfast, sloppy CW with several long dashes here and there, on 6943 and 6950 kHz -- I tuned in around 1454 UTC, and right at 1500 UTC the transmissions switched to a different pair of frequencies, 6941 and 6948. The actual frequencies (where they would be zeroed) were off by maybe 500 Hz from the frequencies I've given.
I checked in that part of the spectrum again at 1513 and heard the signals weaker, at 6942 and 6949, and then they switched at 1520 UTC to 6943 and 6950 kHz. It was apparent that the increase of daylight at my location was weakening the signals, which I believe -- in this case -- were from the Russian Far East somewhere, either Vladivostok or Kamchatka.
During this time, the Hainan Lawnmower (OTHR) was MIA, and the 'K' single letter beacon was also MIA. There weren't many, if any signals from Japan, either, on the 40M band, which was mostly dead.
The digital HFT racket maker on 6838 was just audible, but just above the static level. So conditions were open for very strong signals (the 6838 Racket maker is probably located in the Midwest somewhere, from researched guesses).
A Korean broadcaster on 6865 and its jammer were barely audible, though, so there were conditions open to Asia.
The reason I maintain that at least some of these Russian 7 kHz FSK signals are coming from the Russian Far East -- instead of the Crimea or Caucasus which is where some of them have been DF'ed to -- is because there is no way that a signal from the Crimea or Caucasus would make it to the NW US as strong as these signals were, at this time of day, when looking at overall propagation. The FSK signals started out S3-S4 out of 5, and faded to S1-S2 out of 5.
It's also apparent that these FSK transmitters are probably running very high power.
Anyway, they are still doing their thing. I'm not sure if there is any rhyme or reason to the appearance of the transmissions, but if they are military, there doesn't need to be.
There's a new STANAG transmission I hear most nights on 6844 kHz that appeared about 2-3 months ago, which was never there before. Whether that is related to the current war or just a change of operations, I have no idea. But it just shows that when it comes to military transmissions, there's always a bit of uncertainty as to when or why they are transmitting when they do.
I'm located in Western WA state, and my receivers were a PL-330 and D808 with a ~110 ft outdoor wire.
Topic: UNID 6961 CW 0510 UTC 12 DEC 2025 (Read 13053 times)