What happened to the Number Stations website?

For some of my visitors, you’re probably asking “Wait, isn’t this supposed to be a Number Stations website?” or “Aren’t you supposed to be Jo Reggelt?”

The answer is ‘Yes’.

Yes - this was Shortwave Numbers. During the Coronavirus lockdown in March 2020, I contacted Simon Mason who had recently closed down his website. It was a treasure trove of Number Station facts, recordings and knowledge. I’d argue that it was the most comprehensive one out there, more so than Priyom. I offered to host Simon’s articles on my own website. As part of that, I chose to standardise a copy of his archive on YouTube and align the correct metadata to each recording. Since March 2020, I had set myself the task of putting Simon’s work back together.

It was a moderate success, but came with challenges.

I learned a staggering amount of facts about Number Stations; about the Czech’s adoration to complicating things; about Vaclav Jelinek convincing people that he was Erwin Van Haarlem; about Tyrolean Politics. With this, I was interviewed by Ian at Cold War Conversations - a Podcast worth subscribing to. Ian mentioned that the episode was highly engaging for his audience - to which, I’m elated to hear.

However, the challenges began to outweigh the successes.

Life is busy. I have a job that I love, which I give more hours than it dictates. I have a wife to spend time with, (for which she was still my fiancee before Shortwave Numbers started!), I have a family to love and a world to explore. It all takes time - and for the little I had left to donate to Shortwave Numbers, I needed to claim it back.

On YouTube, the company which deals with Copyright on behalf of The Conet Project (a collection of the recordings released by Akin Fernandez) began to claim each video that had a 2-second identical recording with those of The Conet Project. Naturally, this is challenging as each Number Stations had a call-up which was the same for every transmission. I was receiving Copyright strikes for every other video.

For those videos not claimed by YouTube’s Copyright system, I was receiving messages from those who originally recorded them. Maybe the language barrier got in the way, or perhaps there wasn’t enough attention of how I’d started the project.

And then there’s…the audience analytics.

It’s interesting to see just how many people from Arlington, Virginia can view a website or for it to be picked up by the Intelligence Agency’s web browsing system.

It was worrying to see that people from HMGCC Hanslope Park were viewing the website, talking about it in a Groups.io page and then blocking me when I joined and asked to provide support. For what it’s worth, the Technical Officers run a social club called TOBYs and meet up for boring Roast Dinners. They often mention about those who have passed on - Perhaps if they didn’t advertise this on a social website, I wouldn’t know anything about it. Likewise, I messaged them but they didn’t bother coming back. Maybe they didn’t want to acknowledge the blatant security risk they pose?

Ultimately, time is more valuable to me than Number Stations. I’ll always talk about them. I’ll always read about them. But for now, I need to claim time back to deliver value elsewhere. I’ll write about them here, but this time around, I’ll not set a ridiculous challenge for myself.

Oh and, yes - I am Jo Reggelt.

Jx^