"This is not the Taiwan number station . . . This station
comes from China . . . The station is operated by the
Chinese Navy and is very active during military exercises.
It's in no way a spy station . . . The reason it sounds the
way it does is because of the old technology being used
to generate the numbers. Back in the 70s Taiwan's number
station sounded the same until there was an equipment
upgrade in the late 70s or early 80s . . ." (thanks again
to Keith for this info!).
Ron
Ron,
I don't think anyone has tried to tie VC01 to spy numbers operations, it is pretty definitely not that.
Is it possible Keith is talking about another station?
Most sources today seem to think it is air defense related, not Navy (and it has a Morse code cousin also). The station today does not seem to become any more active during exercises than it is all the time.
I pretty much have at least two frequencies in my log for any given dates (most often different times on those dates) I go looking for this station and sometimes I can find three freqs in use for a 24 hour period. Like I said, sometimes I can detect what appears to be two sources, each with individual frequencies, but I am less sure about the validity of that. What I know for sure is that I fairly often find at least 2 frequencies in use at the same time, but not in sync with each other. Not all the time, but often enough that my log is pretty full of those occasions. And the dates do not seem to correlate to published exercises. For example a quick look at my logs (and recordings) shows that all of May, 2015, there were two frequencies in use very near each other, 5466 kHz USB and 5461 kHz LSB, often at the same time, and each with different traffic.
There appears to be at least two speeds for this station, I call them fast and slow in my logs (I see it first in my log a couple years ago), but they are all fast, occasionally, however, you can find one that is distinctly less fast than the others. Often when I can find two freqs in operation at the same time one is noticably less fast than the other.
And then there are the transmissions that cycle power levels. This one is not seen often, and it is pretty intriguing when I find it. I see it at least several times a year. These transmissions will be at one power level for a given period of time, step to another power level for a period, and then back to the original power level. This goes on for hours at a time. These steps are not the results of propagation changes, and are always synchronized to a very short pause in the data. The last time I logged this (about 2 months ago) it spent 2 minutes 12 seconds at one power level (call it power 1) and 3 minutes 58 seconds at the other power level (call it power 2), repeating that cycle, 2:12 power 1, 3:58 power 2, repeat, for the hour that I watched it.
Further, using remotes I have looked at this cycling power. Occasionally I have been able to detect inverted power levels on the remotes. I mean, the cycle that was the higher power level for me was the cycle that was the lower power level for the remote. And my low power cycle was the remotes high power cycle. This may suggest that during the changed power signal the power does not change at all, but rather the antenna direction might change causing these cycles. Of course, I have far to little data to draw a firm conclusion, but it is interesting to see.
T!