Photo: Jürgen Vogel / LandesMuseum Bonn via the Southgate ARC
(Source: Southgate ARC via Jake Brodsky, AB3A)
Not an everyday find: Archaeologists from the Rhineland Regional Council were amazed when they came across a Russian spy radio instead of Roman traces in the Hambach open-cast mine during excavations. Hidden in a large metal box.
“When the box was opened, it hissed,” Dr. Erich Claßen, head of the LVR Office for the Preservation of Archaeological Monuments in the Rhineland, told journalists. In the container: a Soviet radio type R-394KM, code name Strizh, a digital HF spy radio.
It was developed in the early 1980s in the Soviet Union (USSR) and used by the countries of the Warsaw Pact in the final phase of the Cold War. It was the last model before the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992.
The device has a digital news system and a digital frequency display. It was used by agents abroad as well as by special units and was available with Russian or English text on the front. The spy version is known by the Russian code name “Strizh” (English: Swift).
In the LVR-Landesmuseum in Bonn there is currently not only the mysterious radio to see. Under the title “Gods, Graves and Agents”, spectacular finds from the year 2019 are on display until 29 March:
https://bodendenk
malpflege.lvr.de//de/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/AusstellungAiR2019.html
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Tom DF5JL
(Source: