A-Day

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Speculation over UVB-76, beginning August 2010

UVB-76 voice and buzzer signals do not appear to be analyzed by any reliable source. Bloggers, hobbyists, and conspiracy theorists don't sum to be a reliable source. Wikipedia is not a place for original research, but maybe this user page is marginalized enough for the fringe topic of analysis.

So have a beer, read a little, have a laugh, and then another beer. Let's remind ourselves that for the moment we're being crazy, but it's fun to have it written down. Take all of this analysis as pure fiction. Don't believe a word of it. I also have nothing to do with UVB-76. Cheers. A-Day ^(c)_(t)

Voice messages

Voice messages from UVB-76 are very rare. Three or four such messages have been intercepted in over twenty years of observation:

• At 21:58 UTC on December 24, 1997, the buzzing abruptly stopped to be replaced by a short series of beeps, and a male voice speaking Russian announced: "Ya — UVB-76. 18008. BROMAL: Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 742, 799, 14." The same message was repeated several times before the beep sequence repeated and the buzzer resumed.
• A similar voice message was broadcast on September 12, 2002, but with extreme distortion (possibly as a result of the source being too close to the microphone head) that rendered comprehension very difficult. This second voice broadcast has been partially translated as "UVB-76, UVB-76. 62691 Izafet 3693 8270."
• A third voice message was broadcast on February 21, 2006 at 07:57 UTC. (recording of the third voice transmission) Again, the speaking voice was highly distorted, but the message's content translates as: "75-59-75-59. 39-52-53-58. 5-5-2-5. Konstantin-1-9-0-9-0-8-9-8-Tatiana-Oksana-Anna-Elena-Pavel-Schuka. Konstantin 8-4. 9-7-5-5-9-Tatiana. Anna Larisa Uliyana-9-4-1-4-3-4-8." These names are found in some Russian spelling alphabets, similar to the NATO phonetic alphabet.

August 2010

There has been a spike in activity on UVB-76 in August 2010. Following messages have been detected by listeners:

• On August 20, 2010 at 05:11 UTC, a garbled voice speaking Russian was detected by amateur listeners. It made a short message with 56° 5'8.23"N little interference and then repeated itself with noticeably more static. This followed recent activity on the station that included more static than usual and several instances of objects being moved/dropped. All of this was detected by amateur listeners and is unconfirmed at the moment.
• On August 23, 2010 at 13:35 UTC, a voice speaking in Russian was detected. The voice read out a single, short transmission several times before the line went dead, then returned to its normal broadcast. As the message was transmitted on upper side-band, reception with ordinary AM receivers was weak and distorted.
  • The message, repeated twice, was: UVB-76, UVB-76 — 93 882 naimina 74 14 35 74 — 9 3 8 8 2 nikolai, anna, ivan, michail, ivan, nikolai, anna, 7, 4, 1, 4, 3, 5, 7, 4 (recording of the August 23 2010 voice transmission)
• On August 24, 2010 at approximately 04:00 UTC, a heavily distorted voice was heard by amateur listeners.
• On August 24, 2010 at 13:25 UTC, another heavily distorted voice was detected by several amateur listeners.
• On August 24, 2010 at 17:43 UTC, Hard to hear voices were heard over the transmission.
• On August 24, 2010 at around 03:30 UTC, distorted voices in addition to fast beeps and pulses were heard.
• On August 25, 2010 around 06:13 UTC, Random knocks or shuffles as if someone is in the room, changes in tone randomly.
• On August 25, 2010 at 11:53 GMT the following message was detected: "August 3 5 2 7 Accretion 3 6 0 9 5 6 7 3". A recording is available here mirror Said message is a Google Translate of 3 8 5 2 7 АККРЕЦИЯ 3 6 0 9 5 6 7 3. This is identical to the August 25, 2010 06:54 UTC message mentioned below.
• On August 25, 2010 at 06:45 UTC, A grumble or garbled sound appeared out of nowhere for 389 ms.
• On August 25, 2010 at 06:54 UTC, Another transmission occurred. (Recording of the fifth voice transmission) A new sequence/pattern with a chirping/crank noise occured on top of the previous buzzer. At times this new noise made the old buzzing noise barely audible.The message content was: "UVB-76. UVB-76. 38, 527. Аккреция. 36, 09, 55, 73.".
• On August 25, 2010 at 18:07 UTC, Morse code could be heard behind the buzzer signal. It lasted until approximately 18:20 UTC. At approximately 18:08 UTC A tone was heard in the background followed by a short message.
• On August 26, 2010 at 19:00 UTC, Four clear beeps were heard in a 5 second time frame. This could mean another voice broadcast is to follow.

Patterns

A few, but not all, of the voice messages fit a pattern.

Date	Preamble	Preamble (transliteration)	Numeric prefix (length: 2+3=5)	Alphabetic body (length: 6 to 8)	Alphabetic body (transliteration)	Numeric suffix (length: 2+2+2+2=8)
Dec 24, 1997	Я, УВБ-76	Ya, UVB-76	18 008	БРОМАЛ	BROMAL	74 27 99 14
Sep 12, 2002	УВБ-76, УВБ-76	UVB-76, UVB-76	62 691	ИЗАФЕТ	IZAFET	36 93 82 70
Aug 23, 2010	УВБ-76, УВБ-76	UVB-76, UVB-76	93 882	НАИМИНА	NAIMINA	74 14 35 74
Aug 25, 2010	УВБ-76, УВБ-76	UVB-76, UVB-76	38 527	АККРЕЦИЯ	AKKRETSIYA	36 09 56 73

Notes

Numeric prefix

If this is a salt, checksum, or opcode, more information would be needed to decipher.

The 5 digits may refer to a postal code or zip code:

• Dec 24, 1997: 18008 may refer to the postal code of Granada, Spain.
• Sep 12, 2002: 62691 may refer to the zip code of Virginia, Illinois.
• Aug 25, 2010: 38527 may refer to a postal code in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia.

The numeric prefix may indicate how to interpret the possible longitude-latitude in the numeric suffix.

Alphabetic body

• BROMAL: may refer to a company based in Barcelona, Spain, whose Internet Service Provider is KAOS. The domain name "bromal.com" was first created on 14-Aug-2007, ten years after the transmission.
  • bromal: a yellowish oily synthetic liquid formerly used medicinally as a sedative and hypnotic; tribromoacetaldehyde. Formula: Br₃CCHO
• IZAFET may refer to a company based in Maidenhead, United Kingdom whose Internet Service Provider is RapidSwitch Ltd. This website is a message board/forum targeting the Turkish language. The domain name "izafet.com" was registered in February 2008, six years after the transmission.
  • izafet, or izāfa, is a Persian language grammatical construct which links two words together.
• NAIMINA may refer to a company based in Istanbul, Turkey whose Internet Service Provider is Turk Telecom. This website targets the Turkish language. Note that all the first letters of the Russian-sounding names spell out the spoken word "NAIMINA": Nikolai, Anna, Ivan, Michail, Ivan, Nikolai, Anna.
  • Naimina may refer to the Loita Naimina Enkiyio Forest in Kenya.
• АККРЕЦИЯ translates from Russian to English as Accretion.

Italic text

Numeric suffix

Interpreting the first two pairs of the numeric suffix as longitude and latitude:

• Dec 24, 1997: (74, 27) is in the Barents Sea, to the west of Russia. Norway and Russia have done oil exploration there.
• Sep 12, 2002: (36, 93) is in the Qaidam Basin in Golmud city, Haixi prefecture, Qinghai province, of western China, to the south of Mongolia and Russia. The Qaidam Basin is rich in oil and natural gas.
• Aug 23, 2010: (74, 14) lies roughly between the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. There is large-scale oil and gas production in the Norwegian Sea.

Interpreting the entire numeric suffix as (##.##, ##.##) longitude and latitude coordinates:

• Dec 24, 1997: (74.27, 99.14) is in Krasnoyarsk city, Krasnoyarsk Krai federal subject, Siberian Federal District, East Siberian economic region, northern Russia. The krai is particularly rich in resources, having nickel, cobalt, copper, coal, gold, platinum, and hydroelectric generators. Local energy generation makes it attractive for aluminum processing plants.
  • By May 17, 1998, Aleksandr Ivanovich Lebed won the Krasnoyarsk Krai gubernatorial election, replacing Valery Zubov, who had been appointed by Boris Yeltsin.
• Sep 12, 2002: (36.93, 82.70) is in Niya city, Xinjiang prefecture, western China. Archaelogical excavations occur here, as well as oil and gas extraction.
  • (36.93E, 82.70N) is in the Arctic Ocean, northeast of Iceland and north of the Barents Sea.
• Aug 23, 2010: (74.14, 35.74) is in the Barents Sea, near Norway and Russia.
  • (74.14E, 35.74N) is near Pahot town, Gojal area, Gilgit District, Gilgit-Baltistan territory, northern Pakistan. This may refer to the Pakistani owner of naimina.com. The Pakistani Army occupies an old fort in Gojal. The economy is based on tourism and trade, which uses the old Silk Road, primarily with Xinjiang, China.
• Aug 25, 2010: (36.09, 56.73) is roughly between the cities of Shahrood and Sabzevar, in Semnan Province, northeastern Iran, near the Turkmenistan and Afghanistan borders. The main launch site of the Iranian Space Agency is near Shahrood.
  • 36.09E, 56.73N is located between Tver and Redkino, two towns north of Moscow.

• 4 of this locations are in Russia Federation. The other 3 make a straight line in Asia. Coincidence or not, all the 3 points in Asia are located in deserts.

However, the longitude-latitude interpretation is not without controversy:

The latitude-longitude explanation is particularly silly -- the commenters are assuming that it refers to an east longitude and north latitude. If you pick a random number X and another random number Y, and find X degrees east and Y degrees north, you're very likely to pick a point in Russia or somewhere close to it. It would be a different matter if they were broadcasting a full latitude and longitude and it always came out near Russia or always on land.

Location and function

The station's transmitter is located just outside Povarovo, Russia at 56°4′58″N 37°5′22″E, which is about halfway between Zelenograd and Solnechnogorsk and 40 kilometres (25 mi) northwest of Moscow, near the village of Lozhki. The location and callsign were unknown until the first voice broadcast of 1997. (The shadow of a large radio mast is visible on recent Google Earth images near this location at 56°5′8.23″N 37°6′3.88″E.)

Its purpose is unconfirmed. However the station transmitted the simple buzz tone for at least 15 years before any words or numbers were broadcast. Because of the nature of the broadcast and the fact that its transmitter location is rumored to be a communications hub of the General Staff of the army, UVB-76 is widely believed to be used to transmit encoded messages to spies, as is generally assumed for the many numbers stations that populate shortwave frequencies. Transmitter sites for some numbers stations have been triangulated to military and/or intelligence installations in several countries. Another possibility is that the constant transmission of its characteristic sound is supposed to signal the availability, operation or alertness of some kind of installation, a kind of dead man's switch of a military or other installation, possibly for the Dead Hand system.

Another explanation for the constant buzzer is the High-frequency Doppler method for ionosphere research, in which radio waves are reflected from ionosphere inhomogeneities. Changes of an ionosphere state can be caused by solar geophysical or seismic events. This method involves comparing a continuous radio transmission which is reflected by the ionosphere with a stable basic generator. The continuously transmitted carrier frequency currently used for this research matches that of the Russian Buzzer (4.625 MHz).