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Radio Havana missing on all frequencies

DavidEduardo said:
There have not been jammers on 1180 for decades. What Cuba has done is put about 20 stations across Cuba on 1180 carrying one of the national government networks. Instead of jamming, they are blocking Martí with strong local signals everywhere.
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Per MWList, I counted 37 on 1180 , all but 1 carrying Radio Rebelde.
 
DavidEduardo said:
They can't grow enough even for their own people to eat decently.

The U.S. has a trade embargo on Cuban exports.

Not enough. While there are some European hotel chains there, their sales point is being a low cost alternative to PR or the Dominican Republic or the islands like Jamaica and the Caymans.

Remember, Cuba is 800 miles wide. It takes dozens of stations to cover the main markets; ground conductivity is not good. And even Cuba is moving away from AM. In smaller Caribbean nations and destinations, like Martinique and Curacao and Trinidad and Jamaica, AM has been gone for decades.
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It could be the return of the border blasters! Anybody got a good supplier for baby chicks?
 
gr8oldies said:
Per MWList, I counted 37 on 1180 , all but 1 carrying Radio Rebelde.
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And WRH 2024 shows 32 stations. So somewhere in between is right. The official Cuban radio site is down, as are a lot of other Cuban websites today, so I could not cross check.
 
gr8oldies said:
It could be the return of the border blasters! Anybody got a good supplier for baby chicks?
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A friend in radio who was on the air in the 70's had a retired mom living in one of the condos in North Miami Beach where the elderly from New York had congregated. She knew her mom played cards with friends every afternoon at her place, so she ordered the baby chicks and they were delivered... with about half dead... during one of the card games.

A radio sense of humor, of course.
 
Mediafrog+ said:
That is the likely cause, and has been going on for quite a while. There have been a few recent occasions when I’ve checked the Radio Marti shortwave frequencies and found no sign of jamming. Missing RHC transmissions have been widely and regularly reported on various SW forums.

That rebuild happened about 20 years ago for the SW transmitters. Seems BBEF units have durability issues; a couple of Chinese sites built in Albania around the same time had transmitters starting to die after only 15 years.

Should the communist regime in Cuba ever collapse, and be replaced by a democratically elected government, it will be fascinating to see how the entire Cuban broadcast infrastructure and industry is revamped and rebuilt. I hope I live to see that.
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The jammers of R Marti on 11860 and 11930 have also disappeared but were present a few months ago. There is a relay of R China on 9570 that booms into the southern US around 1200 UTC that is reportedly from Cuba, so while the Chinese transmitter may be junk, the Chinese money for the relay broadcast makes it work just fine. Low modulation slight hum, not up to R China internal standards but sufficient. Pretty sure it's Bauta.
 
Patrick 29582 said:
The jammers of R Marti on 11860 and 11930 have also disappeared but were present a few months ago. There is a relay of R China on 9570 that booms into the southern US around 1200 UTC that is reportedly from Cuba, so while the Chinese transmitter may be junk, the Chinese money for the relay broadcast makes it work just fine. Low modulation slight hum, not up to R China internal standards but sufficient. Pretty sure it's Bauta.
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Actually, the Chinese transmitters are quite excellent. They are made to the same standards as other Chinese electronics products like iPhones.
 
gr8oldies said:
Seriously.....what's the point of RHC's continued existence?
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Cuba is well known for still using shortwave to broadcast encrypted messages to its spies. Considering there's basically nothing left to hear on shortwave in North America except a few fringe religious stations for very-off-gridders, it wouldn't surprise me if RHC now operates primarily just to give cover to ethnic Cuban spies who if questioned need explanations for why they have shortwave radios.
 
yeoldeschool said:
Cuba is well known for still using shortwave to broadcast encrypted messages to its spies. Considering there's basically nothing left to hear on shortwave in North America except a few fringe religious stations for very-off-gridders, it wouldn't surprise me if RHC now operates primarily just to give cover to ethnic Cuban spies who if questioned need explanations for why they have shortwave radios.
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You are assuming that Cuba has "spies" and operatives anywhere. The economy is so bad, they can no longer support the medical brigades they sent to Africa and Venezuela in exchange for petroleum.

What is an "ethnic Cuban"? "Cuban" is not an ethnicity, it is a nationality. All the Greater Antilles are Afro-Antillean heritage, but there is no Cuban ethnicity.
 
DavidEduardo said:
You are assuming that Cuba has "spies" and operatives anywhere. The economy is so bad, they can no longer support the medical brigades they sent to Africa and Venezuela in exchange for petroleum.

What is an "ethnic Cuban"? "Cuban" is not an ethnicity, it is a nationality. All the Greater Antilles are Afro-Antillean heritage, but there is no Cuban ethnicity.
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If they don't have spies, why the spy numbers transmissions? That's a lot of infrastructure. There's also the possibility that the numbers stations serve other nations' spies in the US, I suppose.
 
boombox4 said:
If they don't have spies, why the spy numbers transmissions? That's a lot of infrastructure. There's also the possibility that the numbers stations serve other nations' spies in the US, I suppose.
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Please use your common sense and stop wasting your time thinking about something that's not true. It's 2024, not 1964 - spies use methods other than shortwave radio transmissions to get information.
 
radiofan2023 said:
Please use your common sense and stop wasting your time thinking about something that's not true. It's 2024, not 1964 - spies use methods other than shortwave radio transmissions to get information.
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So all the numbers stations are expensive to operate decoys, like CTListener mentioned?

And do you have any actual proof or documentation that spies don't use the numbers transmissions? Transmissions which are numerous, actually, and heard all over the world, not just the Cuban ones.

There was a news article about 5 years ago where a Cuban spy was busted who used the numbers transmissions, so the fact that they are continuing, and use digital packets instead of long lists of numbers indicates that they are still being used by someone, or some entity, somewhere in the US or Canada.
 
gr8oldies said:
I don't know that there ever was conclusive proof on the numbers stations. Lots of speculation about "one time pads" to decode them, from guys like Havana Moon.
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There was a news article about a Cuban spy being caught, and they had the receiver, the one time pad, all of that. Someone posted a link to the article maybe 5 years ago on another radio hobby site.

I don't believe for a minute that the numbers transmissions are just decoys. They're still reportedly used by suspected governmental / spy agencies all over the world. Perhaps as backups to the internet, which we know is monitored by the NSA.

Until someone comes up with actual documentation either way, all any of us can do is speculate. But take a look at Priyom.org. There are plenty of transmissions listed there. Those transmissions must have some reason behind them -- old tech or not.
 
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