General Discussion

The above is the Russian Intelligence transmission in the Monday/Wednesday schedule:

0700/0720/0740z 11409/12209/13409kHz. Due to poor conditions the slots were received as Fair and Strong and Strong. The transmission shown is the best of the three. In the image the four square wave cycles are part of the ident cum tuning signal for the recipient. Applied to a computer, these toggling tones would light two radio buttons on the bespoke decode program [SEPAL] prior to the decode sequence starting. The product, presumably after some security input, would be en clair. The message in numerical form reads:

The first group 00144 is the serial number, the second 00086 the group count and the third 02814 the decode key. A manual group count will reveal 89 groups sent. That is because the first three groups are administration groups and not part of the message, hence 86 groups. Had this transmission been a null message, the groups would take the form as: 00144 00001 00000 32127 The first group a serial number. The second group 00001 the group count [refers to the last group] and the third group 00000 the decode key has no group to decode. The last group is the only valid group in the transmission and thought to place the receiving apparatus into standby; in a full message it may well trigger the conversion to the final message display.