I may be a few days late on this one, but the question about Numbers Stations piqued my interest and reminded me of a similar station I catch when I’m out camping.
I have an old radio that picks up AM, FM and a band that contains the Weather Bulletin, dead air, and one very odd station. It doesn’t play numbers, but what it plays is this repeating series of noises that sound like a broken Atari remixed with an old-school modem.
Furthermore, the pattern never changes. It’s just beepbeep SQHERHRHHHSSSHSHS (jump, then slightly louder sounding like an explosion in an Atari game) SHSHSHSHSSHS beepbeep. Then silence for a second, then it repeats. Has anyone else heard this? When I pick it up, I’m in the South Carolina woods outside North Augusta.
See, I’m not so sure. If they were pager transmissions, wouldn’t they only occur whenever a page occured? These were happening at a definite regular interval. Someone in another thread suggest that it’s a packet station, which I guess is some really roundabut way of creating a wireless network.
It must be wireless monitoring. I spent 15 years in the two-way radio industy and installed many of these devices. They could be monitoring anything from traffic to gas leaks to water levels and reporting them back to the base station.
And they’re always on. Saves having to hire several people to staff a station to watch meters.