As a kid I learned aobut shortwave number stations from Keith Wyborny a satellite engineer who ran a local radio club. Keith was smart...  very smart ; he was also full on rock and roll. Every few years he would tell us he was leaving for Antarctica for six months and would ask us to write while he was gone (“Send your letters to Ken Waszkiewicz. Please don’t forget. It gets lonely down there.”) and then roar away on his motorcycle. Six months later he would return with amazing homemade electronics. His Wybornator device was a modem that that ran 4x the speed of any modem we could buy and allowed us to dial anywhere in the world for free. We were pretty sure he was in the CIA (or working for the Russians… we could never decide).  

Keith always kept a long list of numbers stations for us to tune into. Resolving through the static a woman's voice would read numbers. She didn't hurry. She didn't explain. Then: groups of five digits, in German, in Spanish, in English, in Czech, repeated with the patience of someone who had all night and nowhere else to be. Then a short 3 tone melody. Then nothing. Then she would begin again. Sometimes she would cough or you could hear a baby crying. Those little markers of humanity made everything more mysterious.

These stations persist today. After the start of the war with Iran in 2026, a number Farsi-language began broadcasting encrypted messages starting with "Tavajoh!" (the Persian word for "Attention!") followed by the rhythmic reading of random numeric groups. Transmissions primarily occur on the 7910 kHz and 7842 kHz frequencies (USB mode), operating on a fixed daily schedule (typically 02.00 UTC and 18.00 UTC).

The Conet Project

In 1997 the English label Irdial-Discs released The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations , compilations of these broadcasts, captured by hobbyists over years of patient listening. They are, depending on your temperament, boring or haunting, but for me they always reminded me of the mysterious Mr. Wyborny.