[hard-core-dx]: Re LOG: Taiwan - New Star Broadcasting Station
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[hard-core-dx]: Re LOG: Taiwan - New Star Broadcasting Station
Some people wrote:
>>>9725 6 2205 New Star Broadcasting Station Taiwan CC tlk 343 RP
>
>Is that "New Star" or "Gold Star" (="Venus") ? It sounds like the latter to
>me. I just heard it sign on (9725 kHz, 0500 UTC, Sep 18, SIO 232) with
>music and ID, followed by random numbers, all in Chinese.
>
>Mr. Van den Boogert, we need some help.
>
Mr. Van den Boogert writes: Hello everybody!
Although I am not 100% sure, it does sound like "New Star" or "Xin Xing."
The distinction between the "n" and "ng" is not very clear in the Chinese
language, but "New Star" makes the most sense anyway. "Gold Star" would be
"Jin Xing" and the distinction between "Jin" and "Xin" is very clear, even
over shortwave.
Below you will find two articles I wrote on this station. Both were
published in the Danish Shortwave Club's newsletter DX Window (subscribe
today!) and some other newsletters as well. The first article also appeared
as an entry in the Clandestine Station List 1997, compiled by Finn Krone
and published by the Danish Shortwave Club International (become member
today!). Any input on this station is very welcome, especially old
recordings (pre-1993).
Hans van den Boogert - Taiwan
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New Star Broadcasting Station
This is a report about the New Star Broadcasting Station, or Xin Xing
Guangbo diantai in Mandarin Chinese. I have observed this station on the
following frequencies: 8300, 9725 and 11430, where the latter two seem to
be alternates both featuring the third program. Reception is clear and
strong local daytime here in Taiwan (2300-1000 UTC), but hardly or not
audible at night (1200-1600 UTC). I?m not a propagation expert, so maybe
somebody else could give some educated guesses about a possible location.
New Star seems to have different services, or programs. Each frequency
identifies itself as "the third" or "the fourth" program ("di san tai" or
"di si tai"). Content is different, but program format is the same.
Broadcasts range from 5 to 40 minutes and I recorded a broadcast on 8300
kHz in October as typical case.
In order to save my energy I hereby give a list of Chinese cardinal
numbers. Ordinal numbers are formed by putting "di" in front of the
cardinal number.
Chinese numbers from 1~10:
1 = yi
2 = er
3 = san
4 = si
5 = wu
6 = liu
7 = qi
8 = ba
9 = jiu
10 = shi
20 = er-shi
26 = er-shi-liu
Transmission facts:
Frequency: 8300 kHz
Date: October 1996
Time: 0600 UTC
Transmission details:
Transmissions usually start at the hour, e.g. 0400, 0500, 0600, with a
traditional piece of Chinese music as interval signal, featuring a flute.
Once you hear it you never forget it. Usually two women are featured: one
for the general announcements, the other for the messages. They are both
recorded and this clearly shows in the coded messages which suffer from
lack of proper intonation. The outline of the transmissions is as follows:
# Station ID + program ID. An example.
Zheli shi Xin Xing Guangbo diantai, di si tai (2x) [Here is New Star
Broadcasting Station, the fourth program]
# Call for particular units (danwei) that cables (dianbao) are coming.
These stations have 4 or 5 letter call-signs. Also indicated is the month
and number (...yue, ......th report) of the cables and how many cable
characters (dianwen) it consists off. An example:
.........you 5-3-2-5-3 danwei [.....for unit 5-3-2-5-3], shi yue fen di yi
hao dianbao [October 1st cable], yi fen dian bao dianwen 53 zi [one cable,
53 characters]. You 4-4-7-1 danwei [for unit 4-4-7-1], shi yue fen di si
hao [October 4th cable], yi fen dianbao dianwen 61 zi [one cable, 61
characters]. 5-3-2-5-3 danwei 4-4-7-1 danwei zhuyi chaoshou [Unit
5-3-2-5-3, unit 4-4-7-1, stand by for reception].
# This announcement is repeated a couple of times, with the interval music
in between. Then actual code transmissions begin, preceded by this
announcement:
Zheli shi Xin Xing Guangbo diantai, di si tai. [Here is New Star
Broadcasting Station, the fourth program] Xianzai women.... [Now we....]
kaishi..... [begin...] baogao gei nin [with the reporting for you]. Qing
nin zhuyi, zhunbei chaoshou. [Please stand by for reception]
# Then the actual reading of numbers starts in this format, each number
repeated twice. If the cable is finished this is also announced:
9093 9033 8799 8799 9989 9989 1956 1956 4244 4244 3904 3904 9939 9939 8988
8988
yishang shi gei 4-4-7-1 [The preceding was intended for unit 4-4-7-1], shi
yue fen di si hao [October 4th cable], yi fen dianbao dianwen 61 zi [one
cable, 61 characters]. xianzai yijing bowen wan le [now finished with
broadcasting the cable].
# Finally the whole broadcast is ended with the following words:
yishang tejie heyue .....bosong wanbi. xiexie nin de shouting. zhu nin
jiankang kuai le. zaihui. [The preceding special programme.......now
finished transmission. Thank you for listening. We with you health and
happiness. Goodbye.]
Comments from the reporter:
First a diclaimer: my Chinese is not perfect and Xin Xing?s audio is not
that great, so I might have made minor mistakes in translation, or in
copying content (90% is correct though). Even my girlfriend had trouble
understanding the Chinese and she is a native speaker, so there you go!
(Please send her a nice e-mail at hansfong@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and maybe she will
let me play with my radio more often then, hi!).
I don?t want to give too many comments on this station. It seems a spy
station, packaged very nicely, but from where and for whom is everybody?s
guess. The Mandarin used sounds like mainland Chinese Mandarin, but it
could as well be from Taiwan. The signal and audio quality also point to
mainland China, but then again, at night this station is not audible in
over here and so it points to Taiwan again.
Maybe it?s not a spy station at all. I remember some years back there was a
German number station, also sounding very nice and everybody thought it
came from East Germany. Turned out to come from West Germany and relaying
results of horse racing (this was before the computer networking craze and
turned out to be cheaper and faster than other means of distribution).
Anyway, good luck with hunting this station down. If you hear any other
frequencies, please let me know. Good DX.
Hans van den Boogert
Taipei, Taiwan
November 9, 1996
e-mail to hansfong@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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New Star Broadcasting Station - The Mystery Continues
After having written a short article on the New Star Broadcasting Station -
a number station in Mandarin - last year I got a few reactions, all
positive I am glad to say. The most interesting one came from Hans Johnson
of NASWA who mailed me an article written by Jerod Pore, originally
published in the Spring 1995 issue of E.N.I.G.M.A. This article and some
other sources of information make hints to Taiwan being the location of New
Star.
In the article Jerod describes a broadcast of New Star Broadcasting Station
which he taped and translated with the help of a Taiwanese friend. The
article had some interesting, debatable and confusing parts. The confusing
parts I partly blame on the Taiwanese translator, partly on the reporter.
The interesting points I want to highlight here. Let me first quote from
the article by Jerod Pore.....
QUOTE
My friend could not identify the music used to being the broadcast. The
first enthusiastic announcement is: "We are ready to being transmitting".
The station identification is "This is Channel Four Broadcasting Station in
Taipei, Republic of China, on 8300 khz".
UNQUOTE
What strikes is the identification: "This is Channel Four Broadcasting
Station in Taipei, Republic of China, on 8300 kHz". It seems odd that a
number station will identify itself so clearly, although Jerod later in the
article points out that......
QUOTE
My favorite guess is that the broadcasts are intended for the authorities
of the People?s Republic, to make them think that Taipei is communicating
with operatives on the mainland. Beijing may protest, but there is the
cover of legitimacy about Channel Four . . . .
UNQUOTE
It?s strange that when I first heard the station in 1992 they never
mentioned either location or frequency, neither did they when I started
monitoring them again in 1996. If other people have heard these
identifications, then I would like to hear from them.
The article further continues saying that some of the units broadcasted to
were identified as being "in Japan" and describes the four-digit code
system used for telegrams send in Mandarin. The latter is a reasonable
explanation for the format of the messages of New Star. The references to
Japan I have never heard.
An interesting article and although I have doubts on some points raised I
kick-started my modem and started searching on the internet. Sometimes it
pays off to start a search and begin with the least-likeliest find. I found
an article from the Congressional Research Service called "Report for
Congress October 1, 1992 - China/Asia Broadcasting: Proposals for New U.S.
Surrogate Services" written by David A. Hennes, Analyst in Foreign Affairs
at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division. It dealt with
broadcasting to China and the role Voice of America could play in it. We
all know the result, as Radio Free Asia is a fact now. But in the appendix
there was an interesting paragraph.....
QUOTE
At the end of Table 2 are several "clandestine" broadcasting services, all
reported to be broadcast from Taiwan. Taiwanese officials did not confirm
the existence of these stations. Other observers interviewed commented that
several of them were no longer operating.
Table 2. Alternate Broadcasts to China
Broadcaster Hours per Day
Taiwan 31:30
BBC (SW) 3:45
BBC (MW from Hong Kong) 24:00
Radio Australia 6:30
Japan 4:00
USSR 14:00
Deutsche Welle 1:00
All-India Radio 1:00
Clandestine:
"Voice of June 4" 11:00
"New Star Broadcasting Station" 18:00
"Voice of the Chinese People" 2:00 (MW)
"Democracy Broadcasting Station" 4:00
"October Storm" 1:00
"Voice of People's Lib. Army" 1:00
UNQUOTE
A pity that the source of this list of clandestine stations in not known,
but as this is official information intended to be read and discussed by
the U.S. Congress you might expect this to be not too far from the truth.
After this second hint that New Star Broadcasting Station might be
broadcasting from Taiwan I contacted the BBC Monitoring service to see if
they had ever done an investigation on New Star. Dave Kenny was so kind to
write back to me and here is what he said.....
QUOTE
I'm afraid we don't have much information on the New Star station. It's not
the sort of thing we normally monitor as it appears to be a coded numbers
type of operation rather than a clandestine broadcast station. We did
investigate it with the help of some Japanese DXers in 1989 when it was
thought to be based in Taiwan and aimed at China - but I suppose it could
also be the other way round. As to its purpose I really have no idea!
For what it's worth, 1989 schedule lists the following:
Station 1 - 11430
Station 2 - 15388
Station 3 - 9725
Station 4 - 12750 9725 8300
(all broadcsts were observed at indeterminate periods between 2200 and 1630
UTC, often starting on the hour or half hour)
UNQUOTE
Except for 12750 kHz I have monitored all channels, although 15388 and
11430 seem to be inactive at present.
I also contacted Bill Whitacre at the U.S. Information Agency International
Broadcasting Bureau, but unfortunately they only monitor the Voice of
America and other official USIA stations.
So the mystery continues, but with some indications that Taiwan might be
the home of New Star Broadcasting. I will keep on looking out for more
information and if anybody can help me with references, articles or
recordings of New Star, then please do contact me via e-mail:
hansfong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hans van den Boogert, June 1997
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