Baron-78: the Russian channel held open by a live microphone on 4940 kHz

What you hear

The strangest marker in the family is no marker at all. On 4940 kHz in daylight, and on 3850 kHz after dark, the channel is held open by what sounds like a microphone left switched on in a room: a low hiss, the hum of equipment, a chair scraping, footsteps, a door, sometimes people talking at a distance too far to make out. It is the kind of thing you would expect to hear by accident, and here it goes on for hours. Then, when there is traffic, a voice comes close to the microphone and reads a message in Russian of the usual kind: a callsign, groups of figures, a code word, each repeated.

The effect on a listener is different from the Buzzer's. The Buzzer is a machine; Baron-78 is a room with people in it, and after a while you find yourself listening to the room as much as waiting for the message. The catalogue lists the channel as active as of 2024.

Who transmits and why

The format of the messages is the same as on the Buzzer, the Pip and the Squeaky Wheel, which places Baron-78 in the same Russian military net; the name follows the family's callsign pattern of a word and a number. Why this channel is kept open with a live microphone rather than a tone is not known. It may be the way the equipment at this station happens to be set up, it may be deliberate, and nobody outside the net has said. Whatever the reason, it serves the same purpose a buzz serves: the frequency stays occupied, the net can hear that the transmitter is on, and interference is obvious at once.

The catalogue does not give a transmitter location for this station, and this article will not guess at one. What is heard is sent in the clear; a listener only receives it, and the numbers mean nothing without a key that nobody outside the net has.

When and where to listen

The channel moves with the daylight like the rest of the family: 4940 kHz by day, 3850 kHz at night, the change following dusk and dawn at the transmitter. The day frequency sits in the 60 metre range, where a few hundred kilometres is the normal daytime reach; the night frequency lies just above the European 80 metre amateur band, so amateur voice contacts can be heard nearby in the evening, and the channel itself is heard across Europe once it is dark. From western Europe the night frequency is the one to use; from eastern Europe and the Baltic states the day frequency is workable too.

An open microphone is a weak signal most of the time, because there is little audio to modulate the carrier. On the waterfall there may be little more than a carrier line; the room is in the sound, not the picture. The program sets USB, which lets you hear the room noise clearly; if the voice sounds wrong when a message comes, try AM. A quiet receiver far from city noise helps more here than anywhere else in this list.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Mystery stations → Baron-78. The program picks a public receiver that covers 4940 kHz, tunes it and sets USB; no receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed. After dark, tune the same receiver to 3850 kHz, where the channel continues through the night.