Mysterious Radio Station UVB-76 Goes Offline

leathered writes "Tinfoil hatters around the world are abuzz that UVB-76, the Russian shortwave radio station that has been broadcasting its monotonous tone almost uninterrupted since 1982, has suddenly gone offline. Of course no one knows what the significance of this is, but best brush up on your drills just in case."

Comments

It's back up

[jimmydevice]

I dialed into 4625 KHz and I can hear the buzz, Guess it was just a maintenance down-period.

Re:It's back up

[jimmydevice]

My fat fingers, also it's gone again.

Stupid IU!

Re:It's back up

[Anonymous Coward]

One interesting fact about UVB-76 is that the signal is broadcast through a microphone. At times other noises or conversations can be heard in the background. This would tend to imply that the signal is for monitoring something that makes that noise.

Re:ID4

[Concerned Onlooker]

Oh yes, it does...

Transmission at Outpost 79

Re:The reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, maybe, but not insightful. Of course, the station has undergone regular maintenance over its decades of service. The pattern of decreased power (but not cessation of the signal) is well documented.

No satellite imagery?

[TheChicGeek]

The last sentence on http://sites.google.com/site/stationuvb76 states: "As of January 17, 2010 at the latest many available map viewing services that provide satellite imagery have the UVB-76 station darkened or removed entirely. Of interest to note is the fact that seemingly unrelated buildings in close proximity are also blacked out." I cannot find any verification yet, however. Weird.

Re:No satellite imagery?

[omni123]

http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=56.082778,37.089444(UVB-76)&ie=UTF8&ll=56.081568,37.089972&spn=0.014464,0.045404&z=15

it's missing on Google Maps right now... that's actually pretty interesting. I'm not really the conspiracy type but definitely interesting.

Bing has aerial photography that isn't really helpful..
http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&cp=56.082778~37.089444&style=h&lvl=15&sp=Point.56.082778_37.089444_UVB-76___

More sources at http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=UVB-76&params=56_4_58_N_37_5_22_E_type:landmark_region:RU

Re:It's no mystery

[dgatwood]

Chances are, it's a power failure. The area reportedly had a significant storm yesterday. It's possible that the power failed and that they didn't have enough fuel or battery capacity or whatever to keep it running during an extended outage. That would also neatly explain why it reportedly came back and has reportedly died again.

Re:Article Quality.

[Vahokif]

You never know, the Russian Woodpecker signal turned out to be a nuclear launch detection radar in Chernobyl.

Re:Article Quality.

[prionic6]

Sounds a bit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible

Basically, it is a short piece of music that is to be played as slow as possible. In the church where it is played, it is expected to last more then 600 years. Ironically, it started with a pause of 17 months.

Re:Actually it usually does

[hairyfeet]

Don't forget the biggest one, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was used to escalate our involvement in Vietnam and led to 50k Americans dead, and of course now turned out to be total bullshit.

As for TFA it is probably just another form of numbers station, which aren't exactly big secrets. Hell I used to listen to them with my grandfather on his big Korean War military radio (I need to find some tubes for that old thing and break it out) and according to him it was pretty common knowledge those were for spy communication. It was one of those things that nobody with high enough clearance would confirm, but he would laugh and say it was one of those "We don't know WHAT that is, wink wink" kind of deals.