Well we have to give massive thanks to Avare, Trojan and Danix for getting in contact with Jan owner of http://starbacks.ca/uvb76/

Jan dug through his archive recordings and managed to find the recording of the first known broadcast of UVB-76 from december the 24th, 1997.

S28-4625kHz-19971224-2100z BROMAL

Just getting this recording itself is a fantastic find, so many thanks to Jan for taking the time to find it and of course thanks again to Avare, Trojan and Danix for getting in contact with him and demonstrating more than a fleeting interest in obtaining the recording, their tenacity has reaped rewards!

More interestingly though all our Russian team members insist that the callsign is pronounced UZB-76, it seems our V could be a mistake. Now having listened to the recording myself, I certainly hear V. But I am not a Russian speaker and the Cyrillic alphabet is very different. I can see from experiences transcribing messages from MDZhB transmissions why a western person can misunderstand the pronoucitation of a foreign word or letter. I hear V but if 5 Russians are telling me thats Z, I have to think again about my preconceptions.

Listening to the other few messages available in archives on the internet, they say the station is consistantly UZB and not UVB.

So it seems like UVB is a mistake, our Russian friends certainly seem to think so.

What do you think? Let us know in the forum and the IRC the discussion is ongoing!