[TenTec] OT: Strange CW on 80m

[Bwana Bob]

It is nice to know that someone other than hams is using cw!

My old copy of Grove's Shortwave Directory lists several freqs in the 
80m band as being used by the Russian navy.

Aren't there some weather codes that make use of 5 letter code groups? 
Four letter callsigns, like you copied are reserved for ships, if they 
are legitimate. If so, KMBL would be U.S. and 5HMX would be Tanzania. 
That doesn't seem likely, so it probably is encrypted military or other 
clandestine traffic. Over the years, Russian ships have appeared on 20 
meter cw, as well.

A couple of days ago, I copied several long strings of 5-letter groups 
on 8096 kHz. The sending station never id'ed. I've also heard "strange 
cw" on 3446 kHz, which seemed to be a net because I heard more than one 
station.

Is there an e-mail reflector for this ute stuff?

				73,

				Bob WB2VUF


Glenn AE0Q wrote:
> Hello John,
> 
>   They may have been Cyrillic morse characters used by Russians.  Here
> is a link to a table of other alphabets used on Morse:
> 
> http://homepages.cwi.nl/~dik/english/codes/morse.html
> 
> The Military doesn't always stick to frequency or callsign
> allocations, and it could even have been terrorist comms.  If you
> REALLY want to get into the strange communications on the spectrum,
> check out this web site:
> 
> http://www.ominous-valve.com/uteworld.html
> 
> 73 - Glenn AE0Q
> ex CTM2, US Naval Security Group
> 
> On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 6:29 AM,  <john_egger at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Shortly after 0000Z, for the last two nights, I have heard a station on 3.561 (Thursday evening) and 3.557 (Friday) MHz that may be commercial or military. Using CW at about 20-25 wpm with a good signal (569 in New England), Thursday I heard "KMBL de 5HMX QTC K" and a few minutes later five-symbol groups like "HNYRW FBFSH" etc., including some characters like dah-dah-dah-dah (and others with four dit/dahs) I'm not familiar with. A few minutes later, what seemed like the same station began sending "YUAH de 5O7Y K", and 5O7Y then called GSO7, YTCB, 3OXV, and J6MN.
>>
>> On Friday (3557 KHz), the operator seemed a little less smooth, making a few mistakes. He send "HYDS QTC ZOLAR" and then "5O7Y 449 2T 17 T248 ... " with more five-letter groups and some of the four-symbol characters I don't know. 5O7Y then called "YUAH de 5O7Y R 449? K" and other stations VGS8, YTCB, 3OXV, KMBL, J6MN, and NM8I.
>>
>> Does anyone in the group know what these stations are, and what this traffic is? (I think the four-character groups I'm unfamiliar with may be punctuation marks like semicolons, etc., but I'm not sure about that.)
>> --K3GHH
>