New receive station in Philly, hoping to hear a numbers station

[regulatre]

Newly installed station, hoping to receive a numbers broadcast first-hand. My antenna is a "modified" 120' long wire and an all mode all band receiver. Although there's a lot of QRM in the area, I can get a pretty clear signal at certain times of the day. I've tried to hear the cuban numbers station a few times without success.

Hopefully in the coming days I will be able to listen A. at the right time and B. on a freq when conditions are right for the signal to reach me.

I know a lot of listeners are in Europs and surrounding areas so I'm not sure propagation has been good enough for the signals to reach my antenna with any significant strength, but if anybody has a recommendation that would be pretty cool.

[Fansome]

You should be able to hear the Cubans easily from where you are. Take a look at www.spynumbers.com. The database is extremely useful.

Look at "Search for stations that might be on the air now" or "on the air next hour", and pick out loggings from North America that are fairly recent. The Cuban voice station is V2a, and the Cuban Morse station is M8. If it's fairly early in the hour, you can go directly to the indicated frequency. The broadcasts typically end at a quarter before the hour, so you might have to camp out on the frequency for the next hour to start.

Of course, you can also try for other stations; it's just that the Cubans come in very strongly in the PA area. I have often been able to hear the Mossad station E10 from PA.

And, hang out in the Startchat IRC channels #wunclub, #swl, and #pirateradio. People will post loggings of numbers stations there in real time, and there are a lot of knowledgeable people there at all hours, from all over the world. Just tell them "Al sent me".