ENIGMA 2000 NEWSLETTER http://www.enigma2000.org.uk ‘MOSKA-M’ Recording and Sound Reproduction Equipment c1978 Seen here on top of instruction manual An exhibit from the Lithuanian Museum of Genocide, image by member Anon ISSUE 74 January 2013 http://www.enigma2000.org.uk © All items within this newsletter remain the property of ENIGMA 2000 and are copyright. See last page also. 1 Station Roundup. Propagation, or rather poor propagation during November caused some problems for the reception of expected schedules in the most regular transmissions. The polytone XPA schedules c and e suffered particularly badly along with XPA2 and particularly the Friday/Saturday schedules whose usually strong signals were reduced almost to nil. Poor propagation or not, this did not stop the rediscovery of the E06 759 schedule by MP (Marco) on Thursday 22/11. Previously heard at 0030/0130 or 0130/0230z depending on the time of year and the source of much a late weekend night for PLdn the station now starts 1505/1605z on Thurs/Fri. We’d previously thought the station had closed but it’s a pointer that the recipient has had a change of circumstance. Well done Marco! Whilst we are talking about E06 monitors will have noticed that the training messages sent first and third Thursday and Fridays seem to have some distortion. Richard put forward the theory that it could be added static to cause problems for the recipients. Well, here’s the cause of that distortion, a nice rising square wave train within the characters: E06 4760kHz 2130z 07/12 showing apparently deliberate ‘static’ being applied to affected character. RNGB has also stated an interesting S06 fact; I’ve been copying the full S06s messages where possible for 3 or 4 years now and after some traffic analysis I’ve found that not many messages are new! And this includes E17z In fact the same old ones are churned out year after year. So what purpose can this achieve? Maybe it is all dummy traffic? Richard’s report more than adequately illustrates this fact. We’d welcome some thoughts here please. Few changes towards the end of the past year. E06 continues much as ever with the odd ‘new’ schedule being noted. Of great interest was the previous 759 schedule heard regularly Sat/Sun morings 0030/0130z turning up at 1505z 22/11 on a 13MHz freq. An interesting one indeed that hasn’t been tracked into December suggesting a time/day change or perhaps a hoax? E06 is known to be 00 or 30M past the hour. E07 continues much the same with its mish-mash of sometimes good, or usually poor signals. Surprise find was the 0800z Tue slot in the 15 and 20MHz bands. An interesting observation from RNGB: “ It appears there has been a change in Family 3 message protocol. Messages are no longer being repeated. When you hear a null don’t expect the same on next transmission.” E07a continues with one new message in December. E17z has been reported once for each frequency, sad really when others are known to be monitoring it but don’t post their logs. E25 The 6MHz freq reported Nov and Dec and occasionally the 9MHz offering. More help on this one please. S06 and variants Lots of activity and lots of coverage for Novemeber, some for December. V02a Reports from a variety of UK Monitors and a couple from US Monitors; given the mass of US members one would have hoped for more. The new mode HM01 seems to have replaced the entire V02a 0700/0800z schedule as well as the earlier Morse schedules. V13 Activity reported by Ary V21 Report from US Monitoe V22 Logs and other information 2 New Mode heard On Saturday 17th November PLdn staggered out of his bed and climbed to the third floor of his house where the shack is to check his auto recordings of the 0500 and 0600z M08a, something he had experienced the day before. This was also heard in the US on other freqs and it apparently heralded the arrival of a mixed mode transmission from the Cuban DGI. Looking for XPA c he missed the V02a 0700z transmission but caught the 0800z. Like the expected M08a sendings it was six groups, each followed by SK01, the RDFT transmission. The same occurred and the ident HM01 allotted to it; the story is repeated in greater detail after this section and all logs as received by E2k are listed in HM01 section.. You’ll see that for a new mode it’s been particularly busy. Cuban Mixed Mode [HM01]. On Saturday 17th November yours truly did his usual intercept of M08a and V02a. Equally interspersed were MCW [0500z only], SK01 and of course V02a. At the same time I received an email from a member Anon who was like following and he had done some forensic monitoring whilst I had been chasing the elusive XPA c previously denied me by poor propagation. My logs[for want of elsewhere to put them]: Transmissions as copied: (M08a expected) 5800kHz0600z 17/11 MCW not heard; V02a 34061 37841 77571 then SK01 repeating Strong PLdn SAT 5898kHz0505z 17/11 MCW: 73876 08480 30050, V02a 1 5 478 then SK01, repeating Fair PLdn SAT (V02a expected) 5883kHz0709z 17/11 i/p ‘5061’ then SK01 repeating; ended 0751z PLdn SAT 5898kHz0752z 17/11 V02a and SK01 in progress PLdn SAT And the forensics: It seems the Cubans have come up with a new hybrid SK01/V02a format. At first it just seemed to be one of their usual simultaneous transmissions but as I listened for a while I thought I heard 5FGs repeated and I subsequently confirmed that. Below is my analysis of what was transmitted at 0600 on 5800kHz and then 0700 on 5883kHz. It apparently starts with an SK01 transmission and then one group of V2a appears, then another SK01 but the whole thing is actually well choreographed as follows. The V02a without the SK01 repeats as follows 27911 59151 90871 34061 39841 77571 then a short pause then 27911 59151 and so on. Note that all 5FGs end in 1. Then we get the following SK01 lead in tone "27911" 23 second SK01 TX "59151" 31 second SK01 TX "90871" 20 second SK01 TX "34061" 20 second SK01 TX "39841" 28 second SK01 TX "77571" 28 second SK01 TX "27911" 23 second SK01 TX "59151" This goes around 6 times then goes back to just the 6 5FGs for a while then the whole process starts again. Cuban Mixed Mode 5898z 0500z 17/11 Sends, MCW, V02a and SK01 Note that the sequence of 5FGs is maintained even with the differing lengths of SK01 TX there seems to have been quite a lot of planning put into this new format. [Tnx Member Anon] 3 On Sunday 18th November 2012 at 0900z I opened the autofiles from my system to note the same message system. 5898kHz 0502z 18/11: Carrier up: 0502z Speech: 0506z consisting of six header groups 34061 39481 77571 27911 59151 90871 and repeated until 0507z, each cycle of numbers taking ~25s to send. Header Group + SK01 started at 0508z and continued until 0558z when it had verbally sent 34061 which was preceded by 90871 + SK01 for 25s 5898kHz 0502z schedule durations as follows: Starting at 0508z Repeating at 0511z 27911 + SK01 28s 27911 + SK01 28s 59151 + SK01 35s 59151 + SK01 35s 90871 + SK01 25s 90871 + SK01 25s 34061 + SK01 24s 34061 + SK01 24s 39481 + SK01 34s 39481 + SK01 34s 77571 + SK01 32s 77571 + SK01 32s The next file was: 5800kHz 0600z 18/11 Again the same Header Groups but this time the start group has changed: 27911 59151 90871 34061 39481 77571; ~ 25 secs to send and repeated for 2m50s, The sending of Header Groups remained the same as did the above durations. The Header Group + SK01 ended at 0641z with a repetition of the Header Groups 27911 59151 90871 34061 39481 77571 for four minutes [0645z] when a low ‘rumble,’ possibly data tones was heard until 0649z. The carrier went down at 0653z This was followed by: 5883kHz 0704z 18/11 Groups as above; Header Group + SK01 started with 77571 and repeated until last group heard was 59151 at 0755z . The timings and Header Groups remained the same as the previous sendings. Not unexpectedly, the next file was: 5898kHz 0800z 18/11 Header Groups are exactly as before; the first Header Group + SK01 sent was 77571 and times recorded matched those earlier recorded during the 0500z schedule. When my auto recorder switched off at 0859z the schedule was continuing, the last Header Group heard being 77571. 5883kHz 0704z 18/11 90871 + SK01[~25s] and followed by 34061 + SK01[~24s] It would appear that this is a new mixed mode; I suspect the MCW sent on Saturday at 0500z was an error and that this mode will continue as V02a style voice announced header group plus the SK01 mode. The use of the figure ‘9’ in V02a and probably in M08a designated a proper message with content; without the message was a null. It will be noticed that out of six Header Groups sent four are active messages if this ‘9’ rule still holds. That the Header Group is spoken suggests a bespoke program to decode the eventual message with the header being typed in to tell the program whether to bother to start. Perhaps the presence of the figure ‘1’ at the end of any Header Group suggests the message is a dud with that changing when that final number is some other value.