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Comment by wichert | Hacker News Reader

For the lazy who were hoping to find an audio clip in the article: you can find some here: http://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/The_Buzzer_(ZhUOZ_MDZhB_UZB76)

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A few years back some brave souls visited the site of the old transmitter at Povarovo and posted some pictures and video of the trip: http://bydunai.livejournal.com/749.html

They link to a Wired article about the station from 2011: https://www.wired.com/2011/09/ff_uvb76/all/1

Old soviet infrastructure like this always reminds me of the STALKER games.

What a dreadful noise! I wonder if there's a good reason so much cold-war detritus is so ominous, so foreboding, and so nerve-wracking in its design, character and presence.

Maybe there are practical reasons in this case; maybe the sound is memorable, or recognizable even with marginal reception, etc.

The WebSDR at http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901 (based in the Netherlands) can be used to hear the station as it is broadcast. Set to 4625 kHz, USB.

This site is really cool. Thanks for sharing though I'm afraid I'll be wasting quite some time today playing around with it :)

[edit]

It looks like the site doesn't get such a large number of people very often and the CPU load is getting too high to hear anything clearly. For clearer audio of the buzzer check here:

http://websdr.printf.cc:8901/

Neato - it's picking up the buzzer station right now!

If you're unfamiliar, search for 'number station.' They are kinda neat and still in use.

More web based receivers are also available on http://sdr.hu and http://websdr.org

or the one linked in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcv_cGLjxCY

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