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Russian Navy single-letter beacons on 8495 kHz: the evening cluster
The second ladder of the Navy letter beacons, on 8495 kHz, the same letters 100 Hz apart as on 7039. A frequency that bridges day and night, strong across Europe in the evening and in winter daylight.
What you hear
The same set of Morse letters described in the main article, each repeating endlessly on its own pitch, 100 Hz from its neighbour: D, P, S, C, A, F, K and M, from Sevastopol, Kaliningrad, Severomorsk, Moscow, Astrakhan, Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Magadan. On the waterfall the cluster is the same comb of thin parallel lines.
Who transmits and why
The beacons are attributed to the Russian Navy, as markers that show which base is readable on which band; no official description exists. The 8495 cluster sits in a maritime segment of the band rather than inside an amateur band, so it has fewer accidental listeners than 7039 and is a cleaner place to study the letters without amateur traffic on top.
When and where to listen
8.5 MHz behaves like a late-afternoon and evening band: from a European receiver the European letters come up an hour or two before sunset and hold through the first half of the night, and in winter they are often readable in daylight as well. The Far East letters are heard from receivers in Japan and the Russian Far East in their own evening. Deep in the night the signal drifts away and the 7039 cluster becomes the stronger one.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Beacons → Naval single-letter beacons 8495 kHz. The program picks a public receiver that covers 8495 kHz, tunes it in CW with a narrow passband and shows the waterfall; no receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.