I heard the sked on 31 October at 0247 on 5238 with a message in progress in the AM mode. It just seemed like a normal Counting Station broadcast except that in the middle of the message the AM carrier was dropped and Cynthia continued with the numbers in USB. Unusual to say the least, but when I heard another transmission on the 2nd of November on 5238 at 0235, it did the same thing. The parallel transmission on 4670 continued to broadcast in AM. Unfortunately, I wasn't listening on 4670 in the first instance, so I wasn't able to hear whether or not it stayed in AM or switched to USB as did 5238. On the 16th of November, I was listening to both frequencies. At 0245 both sides switched to USB.

Now I guess the question we're all wondering is: Why are they switching from AM to USB? Your guess is as good as mine. Until recently, I've never seen a Counting Station do that. It's hard to imagine that this is a mistake, given the high technical standards of this station. Transmission mistakes, we are all aware, are the trademark of the Cuban stations. All the Counting Stations only use the USB portion when transmitting in AM, also known as full-carrier USB. I believe that the persons receiving the messages are probably listening in USB mode, which wouldn't make any0 difference to them if the AM carrier dropped or not.

Another E5 oddity: on the 5th of November, the first group of the message was "00000." It's unclear whether this group has any meaning or not. It's not usual for Counting Stations to send a stutter group.

Next we take a look at the Russian Woman (E6). Lately she's been on 6865 at 0130 almost nightly. On the 1st of November, actually Halloween night, the familiar voice came on repeating "936." After the callup, the preamble of 210 210 543 543 was sent, then the 5-figure groups. In case you're not familiar with E6 preambles, the second number is the group count. That means a 543 group message was sent. E6 stations always repeat each group, so a total of 1086 groups were sent. The station finally signed off at around 0307Z. This is the largest message I've ever seen from a numbers station. Normally, E6 sends messages that are anywhere from 100-200 groups long. The same message was repeated the very next night at the same time on the same frequency . It was then repeated on 5817 at 0331. Moscow must have some important information to pass to its agents to be sending a 543 group message at least three times in 24 hours. Either that or one of their agents needs some practice copying/decoding messages. At any rate, this message would certainly make for a marathon decoding session.

Shortwave listener Eddy Waters of Australia informed me of an odd CW station he hears at 1200 UTC on 11317.3. This station sends the callsign UI333 twice and then goes into three-letter groups. I've never seen this callsign or format logged before. If anyone has any information or loggings of this station, please let me know.

With all the recent activity concerning Iraq's refusal to let UN weapons inspectors do their job, it is interesting to see if numbers activity increases. I haven't noticed any personally, but this is due to not having a great deal of time to listen. The level of HF military traffic was on the increase, so I'm interested to see if other numbers monitors have noticed higher levels of traffic from the E5 counting stations or the Lincolnshire Poacher E3. The counting stations are run by the CIA, and Lincolnshire Poacher is run by MI6, a branch of the British intelligence service. Lincolnshire Poacher is believed to be located on the island of Cyprus and broadcasting messages to agents located in the Middle East. The Lincolnshire Poacher has a regular schedule and sends numerous messages daily, so there probably won't be much of an increase in message traffic. I'm sure some of the messages sent every day are dummy messages. They probably send fewer dummy messages and more actual messages as the need arises.

Please note that my email address has changed. It is now [email protected]. Your information and logs of numbers stations and other unusual signals is much appreciated. I want to wish everyone a happy holiday season. See you in 1999.