Enigma2000 ID: E03a
Nickname: Cherry Ripe
Frequencies: Unknown
Status: Inactive
Voice: Female, automated, with British accent, the last digit in the groups was inflected
Emission: USB
Location: Operated by UK in N Australia.
Known counterparts: E03
Recording from SimonMason:
—————————————————————————————-
E03a broadcast a little longer that it’s sister station E03 (on Cyprus) – E03a broadcast until the December of 2009.
The differences to E03 were the intro music, scheduling and transmitter location.
This is the format, as given by Priyom.org:
| Preamble | Message | Outro | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First two bars of “The Cherry Ripe”, rendered electronically | 87383 | 6 chimes | 69410 69410 03932 03932 42175 42175 … 46367 46367 | 6 chimes | First two bars of “The Cherry Ripe”, rendered electronically |
| 5-figure message header | Fixed-length message of 200 5-figure paired groups | ||||
| Repeated 12 times | Repeated 10 times | Repeated 6 times | |||
| Repeated for 10 minutes | |||||
The transmission started with an electronically recorded version of the first two bars of “The Cherry Ripe”, which were repeated 12 times, followed by a 5-figure message header (the detailed purpose of which is unknown). This 5-figue header was repeated 10 times. Then the entire setup of 12 music intro repeats and 10 header repeats was repeated for 10 minutes.
After the preamble (confusing arrangement of repeats) was done, so 10 minutes after the transmission began, there were 6 chimes, followed by the message. The message consisted of 200 5-figure groups, each was read out twice. There were always 200 paired groups in a transmission, and there was no null message format.
After the message, there were 6 further chimes. At the end of the transmission, the electronic version of the first 2 bars of “The Cherry Ripe” went on air again and were repeate 6 times. Then the transmission was over.
A full transmission took 45 minutes and was sent on two different frequencies simultaneously.
Below is a schedule, as given by Priyom.org:
| Sunday – Friday | ||
|---|---|---|
| UTC | kHz | kHz |
| 00:00 | 18664 | 21866 |
| 01:00 | 19884 | 21866 |
| 05:00 | 16525 | 18465 |
| 07:00 | 20610 | 21865 |
| 10:00 | 20474 | 23461 |
| 11:00 | 18864 | 23461 |
| 12:00 | 18864 | 23461 |
| 13:00 | 18864 | 21866 |
| 14:00 | 18864 | 20707 |
| 22:00 | 18864 | 24644 |
| 23:00 | 18864 | 21866 |
Note: the schedule above shows the UTC time of the transmission and the two requencies the transmission was broadcast on at the same time.
As a matter of fact, E03a was broadcast from Guam most of its lifetime, but in September 2009 moved to Humpty Doo, in Northern Australia where it stayed until it was shut down in December of the same year.