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Russian Navy single-letter beacons on 16332 kHz: the long-haul daytime cluster
The highest of the catalogued Navy letter clusters, on 16332 kHz, where the daytime paths run longest. From Europe this is the band for the Pacific letters F, K and M; from Asia it is the band for the European bases.
What you hear
The same single letters in Morse as in the main article, 100 Hz apart, each repeating on its own pitch: D, P, S, C, A, F, K and M, from Sevastopol, Kaliningrad, Severomorsk, Moscow, Astrakhan, Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Magadan. On 16 MHz the ladder is often incomplete, with only the letters whose path happens to be open at the moment.
Who transmits and why
Attributed to the Russian Navy as a propagation and channel-marking system, without any official description. The high clusters exist for the long distances: a ship in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific needs a band that reaches a base on the other side of the continent in daylight, and 16332 is one of them.
When and where to listen
Daylight at both ends of the path, which for Europe means the late morning and early afternoon, when the Far East is still in daylight. On a good day a European receiver hears F, K or M on 16332 while the same letters are silent on the lower clusters. Receivers in Japan and South-East Asia hear the European letters in their afternoon and evening. In winter at a solar minimum the frequency can be empty for days; near a maximum it carries the full set.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Beacons → Naval single-letter beacons 16332 kHz. The program picks a public receiver that covers 16332 kHz, tunes it in CW with a narrow passband and shows the waterfall; no receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.