Utility & Numbers Stations

Utility & Numbers Stations

This site is dedicated to HF short wave investigations & other signal identifications

Many of the radio reception recordings on this website pertain to unusual, uncommon, unknown, or mystery signals that might be found on radio, shortwave or VHF/UHF. Among the subjects covered are numbers stations, utility stations, military transmissions (both means in the clear and encrypted / encoded), aviation, maritime, ham radio, CB radio, radars, ionosodes, propagation beacons, ditters, dashers, whistlers, and just about anything else that might transmit, in any mode, USB, LSB, CW, Morse Code, FM, AM,FMCW, LFMCW, etc. etc. All the recordings are made by a team member. In other cases credits are mentioned, or © for copyright.

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LEGAL ADVICE:
all recordings are completely legal. Within the EU, it is not forbidden to listen to and log analogue signals of any kind. This also applies to pirate stations. It's legal to listen to them!
Again: This Website is only and only for DX-Hobbyists.

04265 khz, "Chinese Robot" - Numbers Station

 4265 kHz, LSB mode. This is a Chinese oddity station, found on shortwave, known as VC01, also called the "Chinese Robot". The designation VC01 was assigned by the Numbers and Oddities web site. This signal has been active for over 20 years. Its purpose has never been confirmed, but it may be related to Chinese military air tracking. There is a, probably, related Morse code station that carries similar traffic. The Morse station is known as MC03.

The station is often on the air 24 hours a day, every day. It uses at least 4 frequencies in a 24 hour period, a set of 2 frequencies for possible daytime use, and another set of two for possible night time use. Typically one frequency of the set of two is in USB, and the other is in LSB. It typically operates on a given set of frequencies for about a month, and then changes them all. The voice is obviously either recorded human, machine selected and reproduced, or it is synthetic. The rate of delivery is too fast for reliable human copy over extended time. Credit for Youtuber "First Token".