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 BPA        06373
 WNY        01428
 KRN        00484
 
Traffic has always been the same group of cipher systems including the
substitution group at the end.
 
By the late 1980's they were being reported in most of the UTE publications.
Don Schimmel reported them in one of the earliest issues of Monitoring Times
as UNID and Bob Margolis reported them in Popular Communications.
 
The NDO link has always been a strange one. Not much activity. Only one
schedule a week (on Wednesdays) and even that is not granted. The WFO / MIG
link is the only known 2-way link in the Americas. Although it still operates
somewhat clandestinely - minimum amt of chatter, etc. The station sending WFO
is definitely the Cuban end (by propagation and bearings). The other end has
been pin pointed in the New York City area, probably the Russian UN delegacy.
 
In the late 80's an European network of RTTY stations popped up, similar
to a network that was active in the America's. Both networks are still very
active today.
 
The master station in Europe was 'RCF'. Several frequency guides listed RCF
as Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Moscow. After the disintegration of the
USSR, the 'RCF' callsign disappeared. The new master station is as powerful
as RCF was and one thing is for sure: this station is located in or very
near Moscow as well. The station was DFed various times and every time Moscow
appeared to be the source of the signal. It is very likely that RCF is still
alive and kicking, but doesn't use its old callsign anymore.
Whether the master station or RCF really is / was MFA Moscow will probably
remain a mystery. There are many other suggestions though varying from a
shipping network to possible connections with TASS, KGB or GRU.
I stick to the theory that this is a diplo network. Whenever something hot
is happening, like the Chechenya actions, the stations of the Brotherhood
are making overtime, even on Sundays, while there are normally no transmis-
sions on Sundays. The only station that is often heard on Sundays is BFR,
which may indicate that it is possibly located in an Islamic country.
 
The master station transmits crypted messages (5-letter or 5-figure groups)
to the other stations. There are fixed schedules for a couple of stations
while others are reported less frequently. During the time that RCF was still
in place they didn't need to have fixed schedules, as the traffic list system
was being used. Now that this system is no longer in use, each link has one
or two fixed skeds on an assigned frequency pair. This system is probably
much safer, as the sender knows that the recipient received the message
correctly.
The auto-broadcasts to a.o. KUL, VKX, RAU and RKD are probably just
circular's or routine traffic sent to the specific networks (transmitted
blind and therefore repeated throughout the day on a larger number of
frequencies). It appears that almost all the callsigns that were on RCF's
traffic list are still there.
 
So far we have found the following fixed two-way schedules for Europe:
-
- 08:25-08:30 ??? to DKR
- 08:35       ??? to RJA
- 08:45       WQL to VNB and vice versa
- 09:10       ??? to UXW
- 09:25       ??? to JUA
- 10:05-10:10 ??? to CAZ
- 11:15       KKK to KUA
- 13:20       ??? to DKR
- 14:30       RGA to BFR and vice versa
- 14:50       ??? to RPO
- 16:35       ??? to UDZ 21
- 16:50       ??? to JUA
 
The callups and messages can be divided into two groups: the most common for
the America's and Europe goes as follows: ''4646464646464646 KUL KUL KUL KUL
1/226''. Note that 46's are transmitted instead of RY's, then the callsign
of the recipient and the number of messages / number of 5-letter or 5-figure
groups in this message.
The other one is yet only noted in Europe. The transmissions start with a
selcal of 6-tones (the system is called Mazielka), followed by the callsign
of the recipient sent in CW, then into RTTY where the preamble is hand keyed
while the other system has an automated preamble. The Mazielka callup is
fairly new, it has been reported since mid 1994.
The Mazielka is a selcal system that is used by the master station to wake
up a station outside the normal fixed sked. It is only used to catch the
operators attention, not to start the equipment remotely (just like the
selcal used in aircraft). The fact that they switch to CW after the Mazielka
is a sure sign that the operator has to prepare the equipment before they
can start the transmission. The use of non-error correcting RTTY systems
makes it practically impossible to establish a link automatically. The
Mazielka has never been heard during the normal schedule times, so probably
the Mazielka is used when there are very urgent messages that cannot wait
'till the regular schedule time. It seems that there are specific channels
for rush traffic as well.
 
I think that a couple of the callsigns are not in use by only one station,
but that KUL, VKX, RAU and RKD are in fact the callsigns of networks. This
could mean that the automated transmissions to KUL etc include messages for
all stations in such a network. This does not necessarily mean that there is
only one callsign for every station in a network. As far as we know every
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