@5.25 Portishead Radio (GKC) chirping away in the background, along with GKD, used for from ship traffic. At its peak (1979ish) QRY 100 plus was common requiring at least an hour monitoring one or other of the aforementioned channels 5:275:27 . So happened I was to be at GKA in an official capacity on or very adjacent to the day of closure, acquiring a Post Office standard key as a memento - buried in a cupboard somewhere
Growing up in the 80s and listening to short wave hearing the voices. sounds and music phasing in and out from places like Russia, and eastern Europe always seemed dark and mystical. Like you were listening to something forbidden from places you knew very little about.
Finding a really old radio do-all at the age of 10 is exciting. Finding random data being sent over on DTMF (for whatever reason?? lol) for 5 hours straight and never again in a really rural area is just terrifying.
I started out with shortwave radio in 1964. By the time I had Geography class in 1967 it was an easy A because I had been listening to stations from around the world. Evenings were filled with European signals and African stations, and weekend mornings featured Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.
I can recall listening to these as a kid in the 60s, 70s. Being a nerd from birth, I was given a shortwave radio receiver and spent hours at night scanning up and down the dial. I love this channel. Thank you.
In the early eighties, I had a Lloyds radio with sideband and shortwave. I didn’t know wake DXing was, but I scanned the radio dial in the sideband one night. I got all kinds of signals. Morse code, police band, aircraft… I finally settled in a repeating broadcast that had a piano playing a small piece, and then came the call sign, and it said “The Voice of Germany” in English. It was late enough that it came time for the normal day to begin over there. The spoke German. The only thing I understood was the name Alexander Haig. The were definitely talking about him and the meeting with him, as our own news stations told of his trip over there!
I was doing the same thing. I still have my radio and it still works. Even has a stereo adapter that works on all bands (FM, MW, LW and Shortwave). I'm thinking on picking it up again, although those times were really interesting. All the East Block transmitters and then some pirate stations.
I was scrolling through, hoping someone would have a theory on the relevance of the song's lyrics. Thank you! Seems like a decent theory. I wonder why the inebriated singers? Was it mocking someone?
...or a drunk eastern german singing the most well-known tune in germany as a joke. the "oh shit gtfo" interpretation makes sense, but without actual knowledge it's impossible to say if it was intended or coincidental.
I was stationed in West Berlin (U.S. Army) from 1984-1987 and had a decommissioned Collins R-390 receiver in my barracks room. I was able to string up a long wire antenna and could hear these numbers stations with no difficulty. Hearing the gongs and chimes brings back memories of those days.
The "transmission for the bright child" uses the German children's song "All of My Ducklings" as a coded political message. In the first verse, "all my ducklings swimming in the lake have their heads underwater and their tails in the air." In the second verse, "all my doves sitting on the roof lift up into the air and all fly away." In the third verse, "all my hens scratching in the straw find grains, and are happy." I think this song is used as a clever commentary by those who manned the Gongs and Chines station for so many years: Our agents (the little ducklings) should now all go "underwater" lest their "asses" be exposed; the transmitting staff members (the doves) are about to "fly the coop;" and everyone (the hens) can find new jobs, which will make us all happy.
I didn't know what number stations were when I was a kid so when I heard "Oxygene Part II" on the shortwave suddenly followed by weird numbers, *that* was the scariest thing I had ever heard on shortwave.
I knew it would be some number station spy stuff, when I read "most terrifying short wave signal" and saw the Berlin tower in the thumb nail but I wasn't prepared for some spooky GDR chime and gongs for sure. That they didn't switched out the old tape really rounded it off. Great video and greetings from Germany :)
This reminded me of one signal from the game Signalis - ""Achtung.....Achtung.... Drei Neun Vier Acht Sechs.....Drei Neun Vier Acht Sechs....." By the way, the game takes place in the GDR, supposedly in the distant future. 5:16
@@_-eYuLiXiaoLong-_ That's because that signal is just a recording of a real East German number station transmission the devs pulled straight from TH-cam. It's the Three Note Oddity, and I'd link it, but my comment would get deleted. Go look it up! You can hear the whole thing. Thumbnail is a black and white image of a short-wave aerial that looks like one of those rotating clothes driers.
According to the memoires of Markus Wolf the Alle meine Ente was a code telling agents that they were no longer required - a goodbye/signing off-signal.
Whenever scrolling through a feed full of unenlightend, cheaply engineered sensationalism, I can always count on Ringway Manchester to provide something entertaining and enlightening. Often times about something so inconspicuous you never thought to question it, or simply never thought it to exist. Very cool stuff!
Very creepy sounds… but to me, even the completely innocuous WWV has always sounded somewhat creepy most of the time. That clock tick, when I’m in a bad mood, can make me feel as if my life is truly ticking away.
My father was a HAM and had a couple of sets in the basement. Sometimes he would leave WWV on at night and I could hear it thru the floor in my bedroom. Just on the verge of sleep, having that going thru my head... I can still remember it...
oddly enough, I have the opposite feeling with WWV, the time signal somehow reassures me all is okay today. If it went missing without reason I'd probably go into a panic mode until I realize everything is okay and bombs aren't dropping.
That final message is kinda eerie considering those men are all drunkenly singing for what is essentially the death of the nation they'd known for so long, soon to be replaced with an entirely new world
It actually mildly upsets me that the ever growing advent of digital radio will end up with us losing common access to the more mysterious and interesting aspects of the EM spectrum. I remember being given my first multiband radio receiver and listening to all sorts of fascinating, squeaks, bleeps, languages and effects like phasing. Feels odd that many kids these days will never get to experience that.
@@affegpus4195 Many government digital communications that have gone digital ( such as law enforcement), has been encrypted, supposedly to protect PII (Personal identifiable information). Personally I think that is a bunch of ballox, as the majority of the PII is transmitted over specific inquiry channels or MDTS, the dispatch and tactical freqs should remain unencrypted.
I remember these along with sooo many others back in the day, the nact magnetic tape does add that eerie feeling many thanks for the capture to digital and sharing
Terrifying to some, sweet music to another... I once read an account about a family who had defected from East Germany during the 1970's with the help of West German agents. They described how their handlers would smuggle small micro-sized cypher booklets to them so they could decode their instructions via a numbers station. Apparently the cyphers were printed on very thin paper so they could be chewed and swallowed if they were ever caught with them.
I was scrolling through stations on a basic ghetto blaster over 20 years ago (out of sheer boredom)...at one point through the static I clearly heard a human voice announcing that something was "holding at MACH 6.1". I know of no aircraft that can fly at such speeds, so I assume I'd momentarily tapped into some military/space frequency that probably wasn't for public consumption. As for number stations, I downloaded hundreds of individual clips years ago from "the conet project". Very mysterious and a genuine indication that the cold war never really ended.
@@RallyRacingVideo I can tell you that I lived on the Wirral Peninsula (next door to Liverpool) at the time and was using my Hitachi "3D Super Woofer" (just a commercial ghetto blaster). No real recollection if I was on LW, SW or MW. Date is tricky, if I was so bored that I was scrolling through radio channels, I assume that I didn't have internet access at the time - I got online in 2000/2001. So the latest likely date is around 2000 or possibly a few years earlier. I always suspected it was a missile test or a rocket launch of some kind. I did listen further and tried adjusting/fine tuning to find more, but I got nothing. I've just googled fastest missile speed out of interest, some of these things can hit MACH 27 (seriously), most aircraft can't get past MACH 3 - So whatever was being tracked/tested was probably unmanned.
Fun thing to do: Use Gongs and Chimes as your ringtone on smartphone. Here in Berlin. And then look how other people around you are reacting when you get an incoming call. It's really scary. BTDT. Very many people seem to know that sequence. Which leads to the question how many of them might have been active in GDR intelligence service.
@@SimonRaahauge1973 I have no idea just how many East Germans were informants, but the common joke in the western world was "half the country is spying on the other half".
Your documentary style story-telling just gets better and better, Lewis. Congrats on a fantastic video which takes me back to all those signals I heard as a kid and didn't understand! 73
Living on the east coast of Scotland all my life, back in the 80's when I was a wee boy I had this huge radiogram in my bedroom with all sorts of bands (LW, MW, SW, ETC) on the dial. I used to pick up all sorts of weird and unsettling radio broadcasts wavering in and out from Europe and Russia/USSR. I remember hearing the Gongs 'n' Chimes one evening and feeling very creeped out at the unsettling sound more so than the other weird sounding transmissions which soft-triggered my 'fight - flight' reflex. I totally forgot all about it all and hearing it again 40 years later brought it alllll back, lol. Yeah the hair on my arms, legs and back all stood up the second that Gong/Chime sound started. Quite funny now how I react to hearing certain sounds and/or music _(the intro to the Beatles - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds part before the singing starts, has the same effect on me)._ But it was quite fascinating to finally learn what that eerie sound was after all this time. *Cheerz Lewis, I appreciate your videos.* 👍🏼
I've learned a new thing thanks to you today. When I heard in one of the recordings the number 2 pronounced as "zwo" instead of "zwei" I was puzzled because I seemed to remember that was the Bavarian pronunciation. So I did a quick search an discovered that in radio transmission zwo is preferred to zwei because the latter can be confounded with drei (3). So something I didn't know before. Thank you.
Very interesting research, thank you very much for that ! As a child I often sat in front of the radio. I found the chimes interesting, but I didn't know that it came from our class enemy. At 5:50 you can also hear Morse code like "de GKK, de GKD, de GKC". Maybe they come from English maritime radio stations? The children's song is translated as "All my ducklings... heads under the water" and probably means that the agents should go underground.
there have been made several tv programs on the downfall of the DDR.. the stasi had spent vast ressources preparing it's responses to a revolt, but none of that never came to use.
58 August-Bebel-Straße - on google maps you can see the old entrance to the station at Königs Wusterhausen, Looks abandoned but still secure with CCTV and lots of fences. Interesting watch
Back in the 70's, I had my Grandmothers Nordmende stereo with Shortwave. We lived in Atlanta at the time and for Halloween I would set the radio in the window and play numbers stations and shortwave broadcasts. I fear I caused some nightmares with that radio. Since Halloween is my birthday, I took this very seriously, LOL!
I used to pick it up back in the day from Poland. I always thought that the numbers are some kind of code, but at the same time I was thinking who would send coded massages via lo-tech SW. Thanks for shedding some light and pointing to the source of the broadcast.
simple- single use pads that are masters for other single use pads. Trillions of code possiblilities- which final code could be the master for yet other single use pads. Unbreakable.
Like noted in many other comments this is very nostalgic to me. I have been tuning the bands from the Netherlands since the age of about 10 so I started in 1965. Thanks for sharing.
The electronica album 'The Shortwaves' by Növö uses shortwave recordings on many of its tracks. Gongs and Chimes appears on the first track of the same name.
When I was a kid I accidentally discovered those NDB signals on longwave thinking there would be soldiers of WWII somewhere buried in a bunker transmitting signals
As a teenager in the '70s I had a cheap multiband radio with a long wire antenna. We lived in a rural area of central Kentucky....I remember hearing those gongs, along with " ratatatski" ...and had no idea what they were or where they were from.
I remember that one. Terrifying indeed. I couldn't read Morse back then but about 5.55 minutes in you can hear "de GKC" a couple of times. Presumably this was Portishead Radio announcing that they were listening for traffic and the East Germans were very naughtily broadcasting on a maritime band.
Many thanks for show it. I guarded the station in Zeesen a few times, during my service from 1986 to 1989 with the Felix Dzierzynski Guard Regiment. And I often listened to the numbers station there on my small medium wave radio. No wonder when you stand right next to the antennas.
I was fascinated by shortwave when I was a kid especially the woodpecker signal. Spent hours over many years just scanning and finding weird sounds and signals. Seemed like it was all coming from millions of miles away.
There is an article about these number transmitters in the German-language Wikipedia. Accordingly, the transmission location was not near Königs Wusterhausen, but the “NVA radio office” (AFZ) near Angermünde. The transmitting point was in a forest area near Senftenhütte and the receiving point was near the town of Crussow. The transmitter near Angermünde had four powerful shortwave transmitters. Another transmitting point, although little used for spy radio, was between Dessau and Köthen near the town of Scheuder. For broadcasting operations, circular antennas with a height of over 34 meters, dipole antennas with spans of 40 and 70 meters and directional antennas were used in the agents' corresponding operational areas.
Ahhh, them good old Cold War days. I remember this station very well. Especially the 'funef'🤣. I used to fall asleep listening to stations like this. Until this day I still do need a radio or video sound to fall asleep.
This I can remember! I have listen to shorwave since I was a young boy on my KURER-radio. It had shortwave and the fishingshortwave frequenses. This was in the 60 and 70'ts. Thank's for this video Lewis. It gave me some "flashbacks". The best from LB1NH. 🙂
Almost 50 years ago, before my Father, and my Uncle, his twin, born south of Berlin in 1911, needed their birth certificates for retirement to obtain Social Security and Medicare here in the US, in 1976, at age 65. I have my Father's still today, which came to the US through friends in Switzerland in 1974, being a neutral country. The certificate has the GDR symbol on it. 😮
I grew up on the very front line of the cold war. not as close as the inner german border, but on the southern islands of denmark. constant fighter jet flyovers, large nato excercises every year, and on one of the beaches, you could hear the distant rumbles of the langeland fortress across the langeland belt firing it's massive guns in training.
New Subscriber. Listening to Shortwave since early 70s. Currently with surplus former military intercept equipment. Your channel is a rich vein. Thank You for doing this
Those erie stretched tape preambles are appropriate for being near Halloween. I wonder if there are ghost signals in the ether out there just waiting to slip into a receiver for a whisper or two.
The end of the one of the most creepiest numbers stations is equally fun and disturbing, imagine listening to that back then!!! We are very fortunate that is was recorded.
A real Gong Show. I saw the shiny silver East Berlin tower from when I was in West Berlin in 1979, after we drive there through East Germany while on our vacation in West Germany, where as I had stated, my Father and Uncle were born south of Berlin in 1911, before that portion of Germany was divided. That children's song was awful sounding. 😮
I was there in 1978 with the school that I attended in the Netherlands. We spent one day in East Berlin and went to the canteen (you couldn't call it a restaurant, all tables were formica). A cleaning lady overheard us speaking in Dutch and she let us know that she liked the Netherlands very much. She had been there during the wartime (damals in her words) and ask if we had a souvenir to spare. I came up with a matchbox with a windmill on it and she was quite happy with it. Her chef however had also been listening and took the matchbox from her and gave her a hard smack. She was not aloud to speak to foreigners. On that one day I came across several things which made me say that this could not go on for another 10 years. It turned out to be eleven....
G03 was one of the more interesting number stations. As the preamble tape got stretched over time, the gongs turned into wonky gongs, just adding to the fun.
We have a several clocks in our house that have what others might consider “spooky chimes”, including a large vintage Grandfather clock, two antique chiming clocks (one from the 1800’s and one from the early 1900’s) and a German Cuckoo clock. So this number station barely phases me. But based on comments, I should probably have some empathy for guests who come to visit us!
I heard a numbers station just a few months ago. It was last August 2023. I know that one numbers station was RDfed back in the 80s and it was coming from a U.S. Army installation in Florida. We used them too.
All these years, I never knew the drunken singing was the last transmission. To me, it makes it a lot less unnerving and creepy to know it's basically just a funny goodbye and final send off to the field agents.
Love studying about the DDR and it’s radio stations and transmissions. The Conet Project is an excellent resource for such. The fear people feel from this and other numbers stations is palpable and beautiful.
Wander if the Gongs and Chimes inspired Goth music? Freaked me out first time I heard it on an old multi-band radio I bought at a jumble sale and repaired back in 78. The fact of tape degradation made a good one for Halloween.
I remember hearing Morse Code on AM radio as a kid. This was during the early 1970s when Russian “fishing” trawlers were off the NJ coast. My grandma told me it was the buoys using Morse Code.
Ahh, the good old numbers... Are there any to be found, still? I got my 1st own radio 1978 and the airwaves were magic to me, I loitered around the am and sw bands as late as I could in search of strange language and music. We had so many interference producing devices less then. I like Your channel.
before the end of the long wave transmissions, some friends and I here in denmark one night picked up a argentinian radio station broadcasting tango music on our old B&O stereo system.
I lived in the Falkland Islands in the 70's and 80's and got into amateur radio, there was something called the Russian Woodpecker that would obliterate transmissions for hours on end. It was said to be an over the horizon radar array that caused this. I believe this was situated right next to the Chernobyl plant?
I heard these broadcasts as a teenager and the creepy nature of them stayed with me. I also remember the 4 note rising scale station, also broadcasting in German. Weird but fascinating in its way...
shortwave gave the listener a lot of news not heard in the US it was hard to get some countries but the signal strength from Moscow could pin an S meter
Awesome as a possum with a blossom video!! I love it! I used to listen to shortwave signals on my late mom's shortwave radio. Though I don't rightly recall ever hearing THESE signals presented here in this video. But this is so crazy interesting!! Thank you lots!! :) :) :) :)
Imagine the scenario, you’ve left the radio on that frequency, receiving dead air as the transmitter is switched off, you’ve dozed off. You wake up to those chimes! RIP.
Oh, I remember all these number stations from my DX-ing youth. There was a debate among us. Most of us were rightly convinced these were transmissions to spies while some holdouts tried to convince us they were weather reports 😮😮😮
At your Intro ,I noticed a Borden Dairy sign and Borden Dairy(as well as Dean's) started in Elgin,Illinois.....Many people in Elgin listened to Shortwave and we remember hearing the irrie German transmissions as well as the Russian jamming on other Frequencies --- My neighbors and I listened to The Voice of America and BBC Broadcasts--- Good memories
There is a low power government MW station near where I live. They have local announcements and information repeated over and over and at some point during the broadcast they broadcast VOA news. At one time broadcasting or rebroadcasting of VOA to a domestic audience was illegal. They also advise you to tune in to their station during a local or regional emergency for official information. They are difficult to hear outside of about a 10 mile radius. 1660 KHz.
Very interesting! I used to listen to this sometimes back in the day; those chimes were indeed weird but I never thought they had changed because of a stretched cassette! The higher-pitched voice made it much easier to understand, even when there was solar interference. Great doco, thanks.
Lmao, I remember one day I played the G03 gongs off The Conet Project compilation from the balcony of a loft I rented at the time, and a neighbour's child listened to it & just cheerfully repeated BONG BONG 🤣
Although it wasn't technically on shortwave, the warning beacon from the Space Jockey in a deleted scene from "Alien" is terrifying on an instinctive level, so terrifying that it was deleted by the director.
I remember these, most commonly it was swamping on an old valve radiogram, my father (ex WWII RAF Aircrew AG/Sigs) always told me they were frequency holding recordings, used to block frequencies to other users
I don’t remember the gongs and chimes but I do remember playing with the short wave band on a portable radio one Sunday and heading a disembodied German female voice repeating sechs sieben eins over and over - it came back to me when I heard the voice in this video
Intetesting and fascinating content Lewis..heard lots of numbers stations when I was posted to West Germany in the mid 70s..had a Yacht Boy SW Receiver..great bit of kit...sadly it got broken...
Another fascinating video. Back in the 70s/80s, I used to listen to a lot of short wave radio. I well remember the gongs, a more suitable choice for an intimidating ID signal I can’t imagine. Sometimes the signal strength here was very strong. I seem to remember another station which had an ID signal of four ascending electronic tones. The voice and number sequences sounded identical to those on the gongs station. Does anyone know anything of this station? Was it another DDR station, or a western one mimicking the gongs/chimes one to create confusion on the airwaves. I’d be interested to know.
In the 1990s was the peak of my shortwave listening on a portable. I heard plenty of numbers stations, mostly the Spanish Lady. I also heard a ton of CW and RTTY.
Long one as short as possible. I lived in SE Berlin for a couple of years (2010 - 2013) in a place called Köpenick. A friend and I used to bike (peddle) all over the place, but more often than not we’d bike around a place called Müggelsee. A lake and forest area popular with locals. We came across a derelict viewing platform/tower with a great view above the trees for miles across the forest. Underneath it was an abandoned ice cream parlour which we explored. In the basement was a single prison cell. The door was open and there was nothing left in it except an old rusty bed frame. It looked as if it had been abandoned for a long time. There was a very weird atmosphere there and we didn’t hang about long. What got me though was why would there be a prison cell under an ice cream parlour? Back in the day I can imagine happy families out for the day buying their ice cream while right below them stood a cell, with god knows what going on in it. I seem to remember the viewing platform having the remains of some rusty aerial remnants on it too. So when you mentioned south east of Berlin, that place sprang straight to mind.
"Die Sendung für das aufgeweckte Kind" is most likely a reference to a skit by comedian Otto Waalkes, who was extremely popular in the 1980s and 90s. He was from West Germany himself, but was well-known in the East, too. To me, that would be in line with the idea of the staff goofing off a bit on the final transmission of their career, knowing that they wouldn't face any repercussions for it anymore.
@5.25 Portishead Radio (GKC) chirping away in the background, along with GKD, used for from ship traffic. At its peak (1979ish) QRY 100 plus was common requiring at least an hour monitoring one or other of the aforementioned channels 5:27 5:27 . So happened I was to be at GKA in an official capacity on or very adjacent to the day of closure, acquiring a Post Office standard key as a memento - buried in a cupboard somewhere
pinned For all those asking :)
I heard the Morse DE GKC repeated. Thanks for the explanation
@@RingwayManchesterHave a look at the old Tagesschau Intro it's a West German TV News Magazine
What??😶
Portishead is one of the most underrated bands of the 1990s
Growing up in the 80s and listening to short wave hearing the voices. sounds and music phasing in and out from places like Russia, and eastern Europe always seemed dark and mystical. Like you were listening to something forbidden from places you knew very little about.
Finding a really old radio do-all at the age of 10 is exciting. Finding random data being sent over on DTMF (for whatever reason?? lol) for 5 hours straight and never again in a really rural area is just terrifying.
Right to the point
yes !!! I think it's why I've had a fascination with radio since I was a kid! For me, radio was always more fascinating for me than even TV.
I started out with shortwave radio in 1964. By the time I had Geography class in 1967 it was an easy A because I had been listening to stations from around the world. Evenings were filled with European signals and African stations, and weekend mornings featured Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.
The world used to seem bigger (and scarier) for sure. However recent geopolitics have me realizing that this shrinking in size might be illusory.
I can recall listening to these as a kid in the 60s, 70s. Being a nerd from birth, I was given a shortwave radio receiver and spent hours at night scanning up and down the dial.
I love this channel. Thank you.
A radio was no end of amusement in those days: commies on the SW, cops on the FM and your CIA stations as well.
I also listened to bbc tv (i think). On uhf for a very short while. Wile
Am I mistaken?
In the early eighties, I had a Lloyds radio with sideband and shortwave.
I didn’t know wake DXing was, but I scanned the radio dial in the sideband one night.
I got all kinds of signals.
Morse code, police band, aircraft…
I finally settled in a repeating broadcast that had a piano playing a small piece, and then came the call sign, and it said “The Voice of Germany” in English.
It was late enough that it came time for the normal day to begin over there.
The spoke German.
The only thing I understood was the name Alexander Haig.
The were definitely talking about him and the meeting with him, as our own news stations told of his trip over there!
@@dangeary2134 that was Radio Berlin International, another atation that disappeared fromthe airwaves with the fall of Berlin Wall 😁
I was doing the same thing. I still have my radio and it still works. Even has a stereo adapter that works on all bands (FM, MW, LW and Shortwave). I'm thinking on picking it up again, although those times were really interesting. All the East Block transmitters and then some pirate stations.
"All my ducklings swim to the lake. Heads in the water, tails in the air."
That means all agents are exposed. Everyone disappear and act uninvolved.
I was scrolling through, hoping someone would have a theory on the relevance of the song's lyrics. Thank you! Seems like a decent theory. I wonder why the inebriated singers? Was it mocking someone?
they were having a wake over their beloved DDR. but for more fun, watch der untergang.@@Dwigt_Rortugal
...or a drunk eastern german singing the most well-known tune in germany as a joke. the "oh shit gtfo" interpretation makes sense, but without actual knowledge it's impossible to say if it was intended or coincidental.
I was stationed in West Berlin (U.S. Army) from 1984-1987 and had a decommissioned Collins R-390 receiver in my barracks room. I was able to string up a long wire antenna and could hear these numbers stations with no difficulty. Hearing the gongs and chimes brings back memories of those days.
I used to listen to them in a souterain in which i lived. It could be fairly well heard all over Europe.
Remember KYOI saipan, WRNO, New Orleans, WWCR Nashville? Listened to these while working at Tule AB in the 80s..
Did you ever get questioned about listening to these stations or did they just let you get on with it without suspicion?
'Merica. We listen to whatever is out there.
I piped Radio Moscow into one of our high security facilities, they lost their minds.😂
The "transmission for the bright child" uses the German children's song "All of My Ducklings" as a coded political message. In the first verse, "all my ducklings swimming in the lake have their heads underwater and their tails in the air." In the second verse, "all my doves sitting on the roof lift up into the air and all fly away." In the third verse, "all my hens scratching in the straw find grains, and are happy." I think this song is used as a clever commentary by those who manned the Gongs and Chines station for so many years: Our agents (the little ducklings) should now all go "underwater" lest their "asses" be exposed; the transmitting staff members (the doves) are about to "fly the coop;" and everyone (the hens) can find new jobs, which will make us all happy.
That’s class!
Thanks for that insider take on the deeper meaning! Really interesting
Achtung!
That's a very possible interpretation
There is so much lore here I can't even comprehend what this is about. Can you enlighten me a bit plz?
That final broadcast was very creepy. Great work! Thank you.
I didn't know what number stations were when I was a kid so when I heard "Oxygene Part II" on the shortwave suddenly followed by weird numbers, *that* was the scariest thing I had ever heard on shortwave.
I knew it would be some number station spy stuff, when I read "most terrifying short wave signal" and saw the Berlin tower in the thumb nail but I wasn't prepared for some spooky GDR chime and gongs for sure. That they didn't switched out the old tape really rounded it off. Great video and greetings from Germany :)
This reminded me of one signal from the game Signalis - ""Achtung.....Achtung.... Drei Neun Vier Acht Sechs.....Drei Neun Vier Acht Sechs....." By the way, the game takes place in the GDR, supposedly in the distant future. 5:16
@@_-eYuLiXiaoLong-_ That's because that signal is just a recording of a real East German number station transmission the devs pulled straight from TH-cam. It's the Three Note Oddity, and I'd link it, but my comment would get deleted. Go look it up! You can hear the whole thing. Thumbnail is a black and white image of a short-wave aerial that looks like one of those rotating clothes driers.
According to the memoires of Markus Wolf the Alle meine Ente was a code telling agents that they were no longer required - a goodbye/signing off-signal.
Lewis you've captured the essence of numbers stations for me in this one. The feeling of the void reaching into your ear and leaving a question.
This gongs and chimes are very scary!This channel is amazing,the content about rádio transmission is incredible!
A very underated channel,Lewis's subs should be far higher..
Glad you enjoy it!
Thanks so much!
Whenever scrolling through a feed full of unenlightend, cheaply engineered sensationalism, I can always count on Ringway Manchester to provide something entertaining and enlightening. Often times about something so inconspicuous you never thought to question it, or simply never thought it to exist. Very cool stuff!
I appreciate you!
Same! One of the most hard working & conscientious content providers on YT.
Truly an OG
This is a wee gem this TH-cam channel
Well said, mate. Spot on!
Very creepy sounds… but to me, even the completely innocuous WWV has always sounded somewhat creepy most of the time. That clock tick, when I’m in a bad mood, can make me feel as if my life is truly ticking away.
My father was a HAM and had a couple of sets in the basement. Sometimes he would leave WWV on at night and I could hear it thru the floor in my bedroom. Just on the verge of sleep, having that going thru my head... I can still remember it...
oddly enough, I have the opposite feeling with WWV, the time signal somehow reassures me all is okay today. If it went missing without reason I'd probably go into a panic mode until I realize everything is okay and bombs aren't dropping.
The clock tick makes me think of the Cold War and the Twilight Zone. The whole station has a very 1950s atomic age vibe to it.
What I never understood was why just before the time announcement from WWV you could hear the lady from the WWVH (Hawaii signal in the background.
Eerily similar to the music played in N Korea.
My favorite station. and it's actually my ringtone and my morning alarm, very calming. Great video I've learned many things i didn't even know
That final message is kinda eerie considering those men are all drunkenly singing for what is essentially the death of the nation they'd known for so long, soon to be replaced with an entirely new world
It actually mildly upsets me that the ever growing advent of digital radio will end up with us losing common access to the more mysterious and interesting aspects of the EM spectrum. I remember being given my first multiband radio receiver and listening to all sorts of fascinating, squeaks, bleeps, languages and effects like phasing. Feels odd that many kids these days will never get to experience that.
I think they experience very little mystery, now. Poor kids.
That's liberalism for you
@@ItsRael108wut? What that has to do with radio waves going digital?
Is digital signals woke now???
@@affegpus4195 Many government digital communications that have gone digital ( such as law enforcement), has been encrypted, supposedly to protect PII (Personal identifiable information). Personally I think that is a bunch of ballox, as the majority of the PII is transmitted over specific inquiry channels or MDTS, the dispatch and tactical freqs should remain unencrypted.
@@affegpus4195i think hes blaming "liberal" places because where hes from its not liberal and this is still breakin tech
I remember these along with sooo many others back in the day, the nact magnetic tape does add that eerie feeling many thanks for the capture to digital and sharing
Terrifying to some, sweet music to another... I once read an account about a family who had defected from East Germany during the 1970's with the help of West German agents. They described how their handlers would smuggle small micro-sized cypher booklets to them so they could decode their instructions via a numbers station. Apparently the cyphers were printed on very thin paper so they could be chewed and swallowed if they were ever caught with them.
I was scrolling through stations on a basic ghetto blaster over 20 years ago (out of sheer boredom)...at one point through the static I clearly heard a human voice announcing that something was "holding at MACH 6.1".
I know of no aircraft that can fly at such speeds, so I assume I'd momentarily tapped into some military/space frequency that probably wasn't for public consumption.
As for number stations, I downloaded hundreds of individual clips years ago from "the conet project". Very mysterious and a genuine indication that the cold war never really ended.
Oh, that's indeed an interesting story. What location did you hear it and do you recall exact year or timespan you heard that?
@@RallyRacingVideo I can tell you that I lived on the Wirral Peninsula (next door to Liverpool) at the time and was using my Hitachi "3D Super Woofer" (just a commercial ghetto blaster). No real recollection if I was on LW, SW or MW.
Date is tricky, if I was so bored that I was scrolling through radio channels, I assume that I didn't have internet access at the time - I got online in 2000/2001. So the latest likely date is around 2000 or possibly a few years earlier.
I always suspected it was a missile test or a rocket launch of some kind. I did listen further and tried adjusting/fine tuning to find more, but I got nothing.
I've just googled fastest missile speed out of interest, some of these things can hit MACH 27 (seriously), most aircraft can't get past MACH 3 - So whatever was being tracked/tested was probably unmanned.
Fun thing to do: Use Gongs and Chimes as your ringtone on smartphone. Here in Berlin. And then look how other people around you are reacting when you get an incoming call. It's really scary. BTDT. Very many people seem to know that sequence. Which leads to the question how many of them might have been active in GDR intelligence service.
stasi was a huuuuge operation.. an absolute overkill of information. they didn't see the downfall before after it had occured.
@@SimonRaahauge1973 I have no idea just how many East Germans were informants, but the common joke in the western world was "half the country is spying on the other half".
Utter nonsense.
Imagine suddenly waking up a sleeping agent with your ringtone and they are now after you lol
Your documentary style story-telling just gets better and better, Lewis. Congrats on a fantastic video which takes me back to all those signals I heard as a kid and didn't understand! 73
Living on the east coast of Scotland all my life, back in the 80's when I was a wee boy I had this huge radiogram in my bedroom with all sorts of bands (LW, MW, SW, ETC) on the dial. I used to pick up all sorts of weird and unsettling radio broadcasts wavering in and out from Europe and Russia/USSR.
I remember hearing the Gongs 'n' Chimes one evening and feeling very creeped out at the unsettling sound more so than the other weird sounding transmissions which soft-triggered my 'fight - flight' reflex. I totally forgot all about it all and hearing it again 40 years later brought it alllll back, lol.
Yeah the hair on my arms, legs and back all stood up the second that Gong/Chime sound started. Quite funny now how I react to hearing certain sounds and/or music _(the intro to the Beatles - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds part before the singing starts, has the same effect on me)._
But it was quite fascinating to finally learn what that eerie sound was after all this time.
*Cheerz Lewis, I appreciate your videos.* 👍🏼
I've learned a new thing thanks to you today.
When I heard in one of the recordings the number 2 pronounced as "zwo" instead of "zwei" I was puzzled because I seemed to remember that was the Bavarian pronunciation.
So I did a quick search an discovered that in radio transmission zwo is preferred to zwei because the latter can be confounded with drei (3).
So something I didn't know before.
Thank you.
direct tv and radio shows usually pronounced phone numbers etc with a zwo, for the same reason
She also said "fünnef" instead of "fünf" for five
The original meaning was zwo (women) for two female things, zween (men) for two male things and zwei (children) for two neuter.
The gongs and chimes- were they a code or type of of communication?
Very interesting research, thank you very much for that ! As a child I often sat in front of the radio. I found the chimes interesting, but I didn't know that it came from our class enemy. At 5:50 you can also hear Morse code like "de GKK, de GKD, de GKC". Maybe they come from English maritime radio stations? The children's song is translated as "All my ducklings... heads under the water" and probably means that the agents should go underground.
there have been made several tv programs on the downfall of the DDR.. the stasi had spent vast ressources preparing it's responses to a revolt, but none of that never came to use.
58 August-Bebel-Straße - on google maps you can see the old entrance to the station at Königs Wusterhausen, Looks abandoned but still secure with CCTV and lots of fences. Interesting watch
Very interesting thanks!
Actually, much what you're seeing there is newer. In 2015 that site was used to record the big brother-style show "Newtopia".
perhaps something is still going on there?
Back in the 70's, I had my Grandmothers Nordmende stereo with Shortwave. We lived in Atlanta at the time and for Halloween I would set the radio in the window and play numbers stations and shortwave broadcasts. I fear I caused some nightmares with that radio. Since Halloween is my birthday, I took this very seriously, LOL!
Nordmende! I totally forgot about that brand!
LEGEND And belated Happy Birthday 🎂
@@lulumoon6942 Thank you very much!
I used to pick it up back in the day from Poland. I always thought that the numbers are some kind of code, but at the same time I was thinking who would send coded massages via lo-tech SW.
Thanks for shedding some light and pointing to the source of the broadcast.
simple- single use pads that are masters for other single use pads. Trillions of code possiblilities- which final code could be the master for yet other single use pads. Unbreakable.
this was the way back then. coded messages go back to the earliest years of radio transmission.
Like noted in many other comments this is very nostalgic to me. I have been tuning the bands from the Netherlands since the age of about 10 so I started in 1965. Thanks for sharing.
The electronica album 'The Shortwaves' by Növö uses shortwave recordings on many of its tracks. Gongs and Chimes appears on the first track of the same name.
I used to have horrible insomnia. I uses to listen to Conet Project's recordings to get to sleep. Numbers stations are strangely comforting for me.
i listen to the longer recording of the chimes to sleep
When I was a kid I accidentally discovered those NDB signals on longwave thinking there would be soldiers of WWII somewhere buried in a bunker transmitting signals
Yasss, I've been hoping for more coverage of Gongs and Chimes! The degradation of the tape has always fascinated me in particular.
I used to listen to short wave after dark when I was kid during the cold war etc. Have to say your videos have re-ignited my interest in this.
Regret to say there's no more Cold War and the airwaves don't resonate like they used to, brushhead
As a teenager in the '70s I had a cheap multiband radio with a long wire antenna. We lived in a rural area of central Kentucky....I remember hearing those gongs, along with " ratatatski" ...and had no idea what they were or where they were from.
I remember that one. Terrifying indeed. I couldn't read Morse back then but about 5.55 minutes in you can hear "de GKC" a couple of times. Presumably this was Portishead Radio announcing that they were listening for traffic and the East Germans were very naughtily broadcasting on a maritime band.
Many thanks for show it. I guarded the station in Zeesen a few times, during my service from 1986 to 1989 with the Felix Dzierzynski Guard Regiment. And I often listened to the numbers station there on my small medium wave radio. No wonder when you stand right next to the antennas.
I was fascinated by shortwave when I was a kid especially the woodpecker signal. Spent hours over many years just scanning and finding weird sounds and signals. Seemed like it was all coming from millions of miles away.
Well-researched as usual, and thanks for making the effort to pronounce the german words correctly - so many YT videos don't bother.
There is an article about these number transmitters in the German-language Wikipedia. Accordingly, the transmission location was not near Königs Wusterhausen, but the “NVA radio office” (AFZ) near Angermünde. The transmitting point was in a forest area near Senftenhütte and the receiving point was near the town of Crussow. The transmitter near Angermünde had four powerful shortwave transmitters. Another transmitting point, although little used for spy radio, was between Dessau and Köthen near the town of Scheuder. For broadcasting operations, circular antennas with a height of over 34 meters, dipole antennas with spans of 40 and 70 meters and directional antennas were used in the agents' corresponding operational areas.
Ahhh, them good old Cold War days. I remember this station very well. Especially the 'funef'🤣. I used to fall asleep listening to stations like this. Until this day I still do need a radio or video sound to fall asleep.
a guy I once knew heard a football match on the radio, sleeping of hes hangovers. he only woke up the two times a goal was scored :oD
It brings back memories. I’ve listened to all these signals. Thanks for sharing these videos. Now I have the explanations.
this was real spy stuff.....
Number stations remain so chilling. A form of continual “physiological Cold War” 🫣
Great stuff. Really enjoyed this
This I can remember! I have listen to shorwave since I was a young boy on my KURER-radio. It had shortwave and the fishingshortwave frequenses. This was in the 60 and 70'ts. Thank's for this video Lewis. It gave me some "flashbacks". The best from LB1NH. 🙂
Wow another great video! Chock full of knowledge, research, and wonder! Great job!
Wow, thank you!
I remember hearing this living in Germany in the early to middle 70s. Nice to finally understand what it was. Listening on Gründig receiver.
It's like they went out of their way to make it sound as creepy as possible haha.
Almost 50 years ago, before my Father,
and my Uncle, his twin, born south of
Berlin in 1911, needed their birth
certificates for retirement to obtain
Social Security and Medicare here in
the US, in 1976, at age 65.
I have my Father's still today, which came to the US through friends in
Switzerland in 1974, being a neutral
country.
The certificate has the GDR symbol on
it. 😮
You can shove it.
@aalexjohna, it was an interesting story, why are you being a jack@ss?
@@mikesmith-po8ndWhat's the story have to do with the video??
@A_10_PaAng_111 East Germany - cold war - family experiences - duh.
Brilliant. Was hoping youd cover this one, being a DDR cold war geek myself.
I grew up on the very front line of the cold war. not as close as the inner german border, but on the southern islands of denmark. constant fighter jet flyovers, large nato excercises every year, and on one of the beaches, you could hear the distant rumbles of the langeland fortress across the langeland belt firing it's massive guns in training.
New Subscriber. Listening to Shortwave since early 70s. Currently with surplus former military intercept equipment. Your channel is a rich vein. Thank You for doing this
Those erie stretched tape preambles are appropriate for being near Halloween. I wonder if there are ghost signals in the ether out there just waiting to slip into a receiver for a whisper or two.
The end of the one of the most creepiest numbers stations is equally fun and disturbing, imagine listening to that back then!!! We are very fortunate that is was recorded.
A real Gong Show. I saw the shiny silver
East Berlin tower from when I was in
West Berlin in 1979, after we drive there
through East Germany while on our vacation in West Germany, where as
I had stated, my Father and Uncle were
born south of Berlin in 1911, before
that portion of Germany was divided.
That children's song was awful sounding. 😮
I was there in 1978 with the school that I attended in the Netherlands. We spent one day in East Berlin and went to the canteen (you couldn't call it a restaurant, all tables were formica). A cleaning lady overheard us speaking in Dutch and she let us know that she liked the Netherlands very much. She had been there during the wartime (damals in her words) and ask if we had a souvenir to spare. I came up with a matchbox with a windmill on it and she was quite happy with it. Her chef however had also been listening and took the matchbox from her and gave her a hard smack. She was not aloud to speak to foreigners. On that one day I came across several things which made me say that this could not go on for another 10 years. It turned out to be eleven....
This was my first time hearing German spoken with a British accent! :)
G03 was one of the more interesting number stations. As the preamble tape got stretched over time, the gongs turned into wonky gongs, just adding to the fun.
We have a several clocks in our house that have what others might consider “spooky chimes”, including a large vintage Grandfather clock, two antique chiming clocks (one from the 1800’s and one from the early 1900’s) and a German Cuckoo clock. So this number station barely phases me. But based on comments, I should probably have some empathy for guests who come to visit us!
The sound of Gongs and chimes was not recorded of a clock, but rather off an electromecanical chime device used in german schools.
I heard a numbers station just a few months ago. It was last August 2023. I know that one numbers station was RDfed back in the 80s and it was coming from a U.S. Army installation in Florida. We used them too.
I got my first shortwave radio when in grade school. I heard gongs & chimes and have to say I was scared as hell!
All these years, I never knew the drunken singing was the last transmission. To me, it makes it a lot less unnerving and creepy to know it's basically just a funny goodbye and final send off to the field agents.
Love studying about the DDR and it’s radio stations and transmissions.
The Conet Project is an excellent resource for such.
The fear people feel from this and other numbers stations is palpable and beautiful.
Yeah, I have it. It's probably the best compilation that exists. I used it for effects in some videos that I did a long time ago.
Well that's me not sleeping for a month lol. I've only recently found this channel after you appeared on auto shenanigans and I'm loving your videos
Wander if the Gongs and Chimes inspired Goth music?
Freaked me out first time I heard it on an old multi-band radio I bought at a jumble sale and repaired back in 78.
The fact of tape degradation made a good one for Halloween.
you can find recording of this, if you dig around. find a good one, and play it on loop for Halloween!
I remember hearing Morse Code on AM radio as a kid. This was during the early 1970s when Russian “fishing” trawlers were off the NJ coast. My grandma told me it was the buoys using Morse Code.
Ahh, the good old numbers... Are there any to be found, still? I got my 1st own radio 1978 and the airwaves were magic to me, I loitered around the am and sw bands as late as I could in search of strange language and music. We had so many interference producing devices less then. I like Your channel.
before the end of the long wave transmissions, some friends and I here in denmark one night picked up a argentinian radio station broadcasting tango music on our old B&O stereo system.
heard the gongs many times on shortwave great memories, many thanks.
I lived in the Falkland Islands in the 70's and 80's and got into amateur radio, there was something called the Russian Woodpecker that would obliterate transmissions for hours on end. It was said to be an over the horizon radar array that caused this. I believe this was situated right next to the Chernobyl plant?
yup, its called the DUGA radar and he also made a video about it
The Degradation is absolutely Spooky
I heard these broadcasts as a teenager and the creepy nature of them stayed with me. I also remember the 4 note rising scale station, also broadcasting in German. Weird but fascinating in its way...
1:46 Hearing the teleprinter bleeding into the counting station brought back memories of working an HF mission back in the early 80s.
Crazy times.
shortwave gave the listener a lot of news not heard in the US it was hard to get some countries but the signal strength from Moscow could pin an S meter
Awesome as a possum with a blossom video!! I love it! I used to listen to shortwave signals on my late mom's shortwave radio. Though I don't rightly recall ever hearing THESE signals presented here in this video. But this is so crazy interesting!! Thank you lots!! :) :) :) :)
Never heard these, but like always interesting, must be terrifying if you are in the dark listening to that.
We’re on the same wavelength there!
Imagine the scenario, you’ve left the radio on that frequency, receiving dead air as the transmitter is switched off, you’ve dozed off. You wake up to those chimes! RIP.
Oh, I remember all these number stations from my DX-ing youth. There was a debate among us. Most of us were rightly convinced these were transmissions to spies while some holdouts tried to convince us they were weather reports 😮😮😮
this was soooo a spy thing. these were coded operational orders to undercover agents here and there.
At your Intro ,I noticed a Borden Dairy sign and Borden Dairy(as well as Dean's) started in Elgin,Illinois.....Many people in Elgin listened to Shortwave and we remember hearing the irrie German transmissions as well as the Russian jamming on other Frequencies --- My neighbors and I listened to The Voice of America and BBC Broadcasts--- Good memories
There is a low power government MW station near where I live. They have local announcements and information repeated over and over and at some point during the broadcast they broadcast VOA news. At one time broadcasting or rebroadcasting of VOA to a domestic audience was illegal. They also advise you to tune in to their station during a local or regional emergency for official information. They are difficult to hear outside of about a 10 mile radius. 1660 KHz.
Very interesting! I used to listen to this sometimes back in the day; those chimes were indeed weird but I never thought they had changed because of a stretched cassette! The higher-pitched voice made it much easier to understand, even when there was solar interference. Great doco, thanks.
Lmao, I remember one day I played the G03 gongs off The Conet Project compilation from the balcony of a loft I rented at the time, and a neighbour's child listened to it & just cheerfully repeated BONG BONG 🤣
Although it wasn't technically on shortwave, the warning beacon from the Space Jockey in a deleted scene from "Alien" is terrifying on an instinctive level, so terrifying that it was deleted by the director.
Signalis reference
Love it! I was playing snippets of the East German woman over one of my own tunes - works well.
I remember these, most commonly it was swamping on an old valve radiogram, my father (ex WWII RAF Aircrew AG/Sigs) always told me they were frequency holding recordings, used to block frequencies to other users
I often find myself watching the official video for Kasabian's tune Club Foot after these Eastern Block stories.
I used to have a PSP demo disc with that video on it. Good times, it were.
Absolutely loving your new intros man👌
@5:40
Hear gkc in cw 😊
The final message is actually a very clever one. "Everyone who understands this message, we are not safe. Act like you know nothing and abort.
Some nightmare fuel for the evening 😂 Cheers mate, on form as ever 👌🏻
I don’t remember the gongs and chimes but I do remember playing with the short wave band on a portable radio one Sunday and heading a disembodied German female voice repeating sechs sieben eins over and over - it came back to me when I heard the voice in this video
Intetesting and fascinating content Lewis..heard lots of numbers stations when I was posted to West Germany in the mid 70s..had a Yacht Boy SW Receiver..great bit of kit...sadly it got broken...
Excellent insight to a shadowy world with a eerie sound track.
Your videos really help me get to sleep. Thank you.
Another fascinating video. Back in the 70s/80s, I used to listen to a lot of short wave radio. I well remember the gongs, a more suitable choice for an intimidating ID signal I can’t imagine. Sometimes the signal strength here was very strong. I seem to remember another station which had an ID signal of four ascending electronic tones. The voice and number sequences sounded identical to those on the gongs station. Does anyone know anything of this station? Was it another DDR station, or a western one mimicking the gongs/chimes one to create confusion on the airwaves. I’d be interested to know.
Gotta comment. Good story. Good presentation. Good narration. Thanks and always listening. Tom.
Glad you enjoyed it. thank you
They organised some bottles for that last transmission, kind of a wake! 😀
yes. a last farewell to the DDR....
In the 1990s was the peak of my shortwave listening on a portable. I heard plenty of numbers stations, mostly the Spanish Lady. I also heard a ton of CW and RTTY.
Long one as short as possible. I lived in SE Berlin for a couple of years (2010 - 2013) in a place called Köpenick. A friend and I used to bike (peddle) all over the place, but more often than not we’d bike around a place called Müggelsee. A lake and forest area popular with locals. We came across a derelict viewing platform/tower with a great view above the trees for miles across the forest. Underneath it was an abandoned ice cream parlour which we explored. In the basement was a single prison cell. The door was open and there was nothing left in it except an old rusty bed frame. It looked as if it had been abandoned for a long time. There was a very weird atmosphere there and we didn’t hang about long. What got me though was why would there be a prison cell under an ice cream parlour? Back in the day I can imagine happy families out for the day buying their ice cream while right below them stood a cell, with god knows what going on in it. I seem to remember the viewing platform having the remains of some rusty aerial remnants on it too. So when you mentioned south east of Berlin, that place sprang straight to mind.
I remember when the first UK lockdown was announced. Goon & Chimes sprang to mind for some reason 😜
Very interesting. I was living in Germany at that time, but I never ran across that station, though. What was the Morse Code in the background?
It's not a morse code, it's an RTTY transmission.
So, what was terrifying?
the distorted gong mostly
"Die Sendung für das aufgeweckte Kind" is most likely a reference to a skit by comedian Otto Waalkes, who was extremely popular in the 1980s and 90s. He was from West Germany himself, but was well-known in the East, too. To me, that would be in line with the idea of the staff goofing off a bit on the final transmission of their career, knowing that they wouldn't face any repercussions for it anymore.