Catching a USAF HF-GCS transmission in Morocco

My buddy, @K7al_L3afta (on Twitter), posted this interesting recording of the US Air Force High Frequency Global Communications System on 15,016 kHz USB at 18:01 UTC yesterday:

I don’t believe I’ve ever heard or noticed this type of USAF HF-GCS transmission before. Sounds almost like a numbers station.

Update: SWLing Post reader, Daniele, comments:

It’s an EAM, “Emergency Action Message”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Action_Message

http://mt-milcom.blogspot.it/p/what-is-emergency-action-message-or-eam.html

http://www.monitoringtimes.com/html/eam.html

Thanks, Daniele!

As I’ve mentioned before, @K7al_L3afta lives in an urban area of Morocco and his shortwave radio listening is plagued with radio interference (RFI). Still, he seems to snag some interesting catches on the shortwaves just like this one which he said he caught by “turning the tuning knob randomly.”

Serendipity is, indeed, the best type of SWLing!

You can follow @K7al_L3afta on Twitter by clicking here.

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12 thoughts on “Catching a USAF HF-GCS transmission in Morocco”

Julio Cesar Pereira PY5WHO November 17, 2016 at 1:02 pm

Oh, so that’s an EAM. I also tuned this frequency on 30MAR2016 23:04 utc in Terra de Areia-RS, Brazil. Thanks Swingling and Daniele. 73 from PY3WHO.

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Barry Sallade August 11, 2016 at 4:35 pm

Another frequency the military used to be heard on was 6605 USB , it has been a while since tuning that one but 11.175 USB has been active more than 6605 over the years. 11.175 tends to have Andrews Airforce base most commonly heard giving weather reports and the “numbers station” style speech you have recorded here. I too have had to battle noise here so I tune in to shortwave using the Twente University Websdr or the Chilton online shortwave receiver in Reston Va.

Happy Hunting

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