Russian Navy single-letter beacons on 10872 kHz: the daytime cluster

What you hear

The ladder of single Morse letters from the main article, each on its own pitch and repeating without end: D, P, S, C, A, F, K and M for Sevastopol, Kaliningrad, Severomorsk, Moscow, Astrakhan, Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Magadan. With a narrow CW filter you catch one or two letters, with a wider one the whole comb.

Who transmits and why

Attributed by listeners to the Russian Navy as channel markers and propagation beacons, with no official account to confirm or deny it. Every cluster covers a different part of the day; 10872 is the one for daylight, when the lower clusters at 7039 and 8495 are absorbed within a few hundred kilometres.

When and where to listen

From the morning until the early evening at a European receiver the European letters are steady, and around midday the paths lengthen enough for F, K and M from the Pacific coast to appear faintly on good days. Receivers in Finland, the Baltic states and Poland hear the European letters best; receivers in Japan hear the Far East ones at the same hours. After dark 10872 fades and the evening cluster takes over.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Beacons → Naval single-letter beacons 10872 kHz. The program picks a public receiver that covers 10872 kHz, tunes it in CW with a narrow passband and shows the waterfall with the parallel lines; no receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.