Lincolnshire Poacher
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The Lincolnshire Poacher
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| Basic data | |||||
| Place: | RAF base Akrotiri , Cyprus | ||||
| Country: | United Kingdom | ||||
| Coordinates: 34 ° 37 ′ 5 ″ N , 32 ° 56 ′ 33.1 ″ E | |||||
| Use: | Pay Sender | ||||
| Accessibility: | Transmission system not accessible to the public | ||||
| Data on the transmission system | |||||
| Construction time: | ca 1970 | ||||
| Operating time: | 1970s-2008 | ||||
| Waveband : | SW transmitter | ||||
| Shutdown : | July 2008 | ||||
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| Position map | |||||
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The Lincolnshire Poacher was a powerful numbers transmitter that got its name from the English folk song of the same name, of which it broadcast two stanzas as an identifier.
broadcasts
The station was watched as regularly active from 1988 to 2008, but has been active since the early 1970s.
The station was most likely operated by the English Secret Intelligence Service and broadcast from the island of Cyprus . Radio amateurs found out by means of bearings that it must be on the Royal Air Force base in Akrotiri , which belongs to the British overseas territories and on which there were also various curtain antennas . Groups of numbers consisting of five numbers per block, spoken by a female, synthetically generated voice in English, were sent. The last number in a group was spoken in a raised voice.
history
The exact start of the Lincolnshire Poacher broadcasts is unknown. It is believed that the broadcasts started in the early 1970s.
There is a strong over-the-horizon radar on the sealed-off area of the RAF , which caused displeasure among the people in nearby Limassol because of its environmental impact . Radio amateurs also complained of interference on their tapes. Akrotiri is also the location of the Limassol BBC Relay British East Mediterranean Relay Station , which broadcasts the World Service program for the Middle East.
After the end of the Cold War, the number of pay stations decreased sharply, but the Lincolnshire Poacher remained on the air. In the 1990s, the station was the target of massive jamming by jammers.
In July 2008, Lincolnshire Poacher ceased operations. It is believed that the Australian sister station Cherry Ripe took over the broadcasts until it also stopped broadcasting in December 2009.
The Kernel website reported in 2013 that the number blocks continue to be broadcast via a telephone announcement from the UK and released a recording of the announcement. Shortly afterwards, the announcement was deactivated and the editors received a text message not to call the number again, presumably in response to a large number of readers who had also called the number after reading it.
literature
- Giorgos Georgiou: British Bases in Cyprus and Signals Intelligence . In: Etudes helléniques / Hellenic Studies . tape 19 , no. 2 , 2011, p. 121 ff . ( cryptome.org [PDF; 129 kB ; accessed on December 3, 2017]).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b We called a secret MI6 phone number. In: kernelmag.dailydot.com. Retrieved October 18, 2016 .
- ↑ "Spynumbers". Profile of The Lincolnshire Poacher http://www.spynumbers.com/profiles/index.html May 25, 2008
- ↑ Simon Mason, October 30, 2009 ( Memento of the original of February 2, 2019 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.cvni.net/radio/nsnl/nsnl147/nsnl147vs.html N&O column / Spooks newsletter: December 2009
- ↑ James Cook: Did we take out MI6's secret line? The Kernel, September 6, 2013, accessed August 7, 2017 .
