Explanation and operation
The Conet Project
In 1997, Akin Fernandez's project called The Conet Project was released on the Irdial label. It's a 5CD set with 176 recordings of various number station recordings, with most being defunct nowadays. This is the most cohesive archive of recordings and it has served as being the introduction to this mystery to many.
Irdial made the entire collection available for free as a collection of .mp3 files, along with a .pdf of the booklet that was included with the physical copies. The booklet details things such as a number station's licensing, the initial perception of them back when they were first discovered, an explanation on a message's format and how it functions and perhaps more interestingly, Fernandez's introduction to the stations, his obsession on finding out more about them and the development process of The Conet Project.
Akin Fernandez
Simon Mason, an enthusiast and writer of a book titled "Secret Signals - The Euronumbers Mystery" has contributed personal recordings to the Conet Project. His book gave another perspective on the experience of hearing a Number Station, trying to understand one and make sense of the entire ordeal. The book also contains loggings of some of the stations he's heard, as well as time schedules during which they used to air. He also made an appearance on the BBC Radio 4 audio documentary titled "Tracking the Lincolnshire Poacher".
"My particular involvement with Numbers Stations goes back to the early seventies, when as a teenager, I became interested in tuning around on my father’s Russian radiogram, which had several Short
Wave bands included. I remember hearing these stations even then, but of course had no idea as to their purpose. I thought that as a beginner, more experienced listeners would know what they were. However,
as the years passed, I realized that it seemed nobody knew what they were."
Simon Mason, 11.07.1996 from his book "Secret Signals"
A 13 year old Simon Mason. Image is taken from his website, which is now defunct.
The Conet Project inexplicably popularized number stations in popular culture. Recordings from it were sampled by artists and bands, ranging from Wilco to Boards of Canada. In the case of Wilco, the album that included the sample was appropriately titled Yankee Hotel Foxtrot! The Conet Project has been referenced in movies as well, such as Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky.
Track 04 on Boards of Canada's "Geogaddi", "Gyroscope", features a recording of a numbers station.
Sample recordings from The Conet Project can be found on the Audio Examples page on this site.