Firedrake Jammer - Keeps You Safe
Update
A few of my recent recordings show that Firedrake has dramatically scaled back operations, and recently it is staying parked on 9MHz - they're just keeping it warm!
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Not many people in western nations regularly listen to shortwave radio. If you do, you have probably come across some operatic Chinese music. It never pauses to say what station it is, no news, no identification, or anything else. It's truly bizarre on first encounter.
What you are in fact listening to is a jamming station operated by China.
It can be found jamming foreign broadcast stations and even 'number stations' that are operated by the world's various intelligence agencies for coded one way communication with spies abroad.
A demonstration of the jammer, including a prime example of it targeting Voice of America's Mandarin service -
• Firedrake shortwave radio jammer - Everywh...
• Firedrake jamming Voice of America's Manda...
Up around the 19m & 16m bands:
• Video
Recently found jamming the English version of Radio Singapore:
• Firedrake - jamming Radio Singapore, *Engl...
A relatively rare recording of a Chinese spy number station (not that they'd jam their own intelligence communiqués of course) -
• 8375kHz Chinese Numbers Station - designat...
It's very sporadic, and in one sweep turned up on these frequencies on June [email protected] UTC in NSW Australia:
6030kHz, 7105kHz, 7445kHz, 9600kHz, 10350kHz, 11605kHz, 11665kHz, 11785khz, 12040kHz, 15250kHz.
There are other slots besides these, with one caught below 5000kHz on occasion.
Frequencies that have been regular for weeks can suddenly disappear only to show up in other areas of the shortwave band.
The music sampled in this clip was sourced from the Satdirectory website below, which itself was captured from the satellite used to feed Firedrake.
http://www.satdirectory.com/firedrake...
The audio quality of shortwave would not have done the music justice. It is unknown when or who it was composed by.
Other links of interest:
http://www.reuters.com/article/techno...
http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress...
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/0...