A quick note now on the recent earthquake in Taiwan. The YL/CC "New Star" station seems to have not been badly affected by it. New Star was active on 8300 the day after the earthquake happened, and has been active daily since. In fact, propagation has been improving since signals from New Star have been excellent lately. This station is normally weak at my listening post, but on 19 October at 1230 UTC, signals were marginal to good on 8300 kHz. In fact, I could actually hear it well in AM mode instead of USB like I normally have to use because of poor conditions. If it weren't for all the Spanish- language maritime traffic on this frequency I could actually copy the numbers (if I knew Chinese).
Recently I finished reading Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. Mr. Marks flunked out of cryptography school in England in 1942 and went on to work for the SOE, or Special Operations Executive. SOE was tasked with forming and running resistance groups and spies in German-occupied Europe during WWII. Mr. Marks was tasked with breaking indecipherable messages sent from agents in the field. The codes used by the agents were based on poems which the agents memorized, and Mr. Marks realized that the codes were very easy for German cryptographers to break. They were also easy for the Germans to torture out of captured agents, which the Germans used in a deception scheme to encode fake messages to London. Eventually Mr. Marks designed more secure codes included letter one-time pads. The pads, printed on silk, were carried into Europe by the agents and were destroyed bit by bit as the codes were used. This prevented the Germans to read messages previously sent by the agents.
Overall, the book is a fascinating read for anyone interested in cryptography or WWII history. There are many books written on the subject of codebreaking, which is fascinating in itself, but it is interesting to read a book on the other end of the spectrum. The book is written in Leo Marks' humorous style of writing, so it isn't another dry, technical history of cryptography. I would highly recommend this book for your radio bookshelf.
I've started reading the book The Haunted Wood, which is a book about Russian intelligence gathering in America during the Stalin era. I'll let you know what I think about the book when I'm finished.
Now on to the loggings. All times in UTC.
3292 - AM V2a A 95541 05202 29_23 at 0200. (JM)
4506.5 - CW M8a in progress at 0300. (JM)
5046 - AM V5 at 0300 //4640//12300.5//14421 rptg 709 Grupo 220. (JM)
6379 - CW M22 4XZ marker on new frequency at 0150. (JM)
6840 - USB E10 EZI at 0100 with two mess #1 (20) QYNMQ #2 (58) CPSZV. (JM)
Good to see this longtime numbers frequency still in use. - Tom
7745 - CW ?? unid 5FG T=0 at 0140. Down w/TTT. (JM)
8300 - "New Star" YL/CC 4F msg in AM at 1230. (TS)
8676 - AM V2 A 616/08 08/80 at 0200. (JM)
10248 - CW M16 //12075//14931 8BY 0240-0300. (JM)
10423 - AM E5 //12197 rptg 137 Count 1_5 at 2200. (JM)
10450 - AM E17 at 0215, repeat of previous night's broadcast. (JM)
14842.5 - JMS, Russian MFA/FAPSI in RTTY 75/500 at 2230 w/ 5F grp msg. (TS)
15651 - AM V5 //13452 rptg 778 Grupo 121 at 0100. (JM)
17050 - CW M22 //10046 4XZ in tfc at 0215. (JM)
22865 - PSN, Russian MFA/FAPSI in RTTY 75/500 at 2240 w/ 5L msgs. At 2311 came up on 19921 for
repeat. (TS)
Contibutors - (JM) John Maky, AR, (TS) Tom Sevart, KS
That's all this month. Your contributions and loggings are always welcome and appreciated.