THIS FREQUENCY WAS TEMPORARY AND IS NOW NO LONGER IN USE

 

It hasn't been long since Russian military added a channel marker (B Marker mentioned in last blog post) to a channel - which sends monolith messages just like Buzzer, Pip, Wheel and so on - using frequency 5292kHz. It looks like the Western & Central military districts at least are undergoing some changes and/or upgrades, for the past few days the Buzzer has been also sending continuously on 3216kHz as well as its regular and longstanding frequency of 4625kHz. The transmission on 3216kHz seems to be a simulcast of 4625kHz and would make sense for night time reception. Pip (S30) and Squeaky Wheel (S32) have had day & night frequencies for as long as we've known of their existence but there has never (to our knowledge) been a Buzzer night frequency, though we have seen irregular testing on 4620kHz in the recent past.

It would make sense that messages currently sent after 1400UTC (depending on season this varies) would be best received on 3216kHz as we see both Pip and Wheel night frequencies also in the 3MHz band and in the present season they change to these frequencies at around 1400UTC each day. Although these two stations have night frequencies which are around 500-600kHz higher than 3216kHz (3756kHz and 3828kHz) they also have day frequencies which are roughly the same amount of kHz above 4625kHz (5448kHz and 5473kHz).

At first, we in the Priyom group had anticipated that this may be a shortlived test of another frequency as we have seen before with 4620kHz but this does not seem to be the case due to it being stable on the new frequency for almost a week now (since February 19th, current date is February 24th). We will continue to monitor this frequency for any changes and will update this blog post should anything out of the ordinary occur or should this frequency prove to be a test lasting X amount of days.

 

Article by Gwraspe