This isn't a puzzle cache, more of an unusual multi. The pictures and links are "hints" to help you understand what to do with the info you get from stage one.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find the geocache. You will have to use your amazing powers of deduction and observation along with a "special" tool you almost certainly already have with you. Stealth is important, muggles are everywhere. As always, should you be captured the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your mission. Good luck!
This cache features an element of "Tradecraft" (covert intelligence techniques) known as numbers stations. A numbers station transmits coded messages to spies
If you really want to get into the spirit of this puzzle right click to open this link in a new window and hit the "play" button in the upper right hand corner to listen while you read this. Click here to go to a the Conet Project, a Numbers Stations recording site.
A numbers station is a type of shortwave radio station characterized by unusual broadcasts, often created by artificially generated voices reciting streams of numbers, words, letters, tunes or Morse code. They are transmitted in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, although sometimes men's or children's voices are used.
FYI, the 2013 John Cusak film "NUM8ERS STATION" has virtually no semblance to real numbers stations. The messages are typically "spoken" by machines and use a "one time pad" which is unbreakable by any cryptoanalytic method - unless it is used more than once... and then it wouldn't be a one time pad. Below is a speech generator. An operator would load a paper tape and the machine would synthesize a human voice reading the message. The operator would have no idea what the message meant or who it was intended for.
In 2002 the band Wilco released their album "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" which derived it's name from and includes audio of a notorious numbers station.
In the 1960s, Time magazine reported that the numbers stations first appeared shortly after World War II and were imitating a format that had been used to send weather data during that war. It is widely assumed that these broadcasts transmit covert messages to spies.
This has not been officially acknowledged by any government that may operate a numbers station, and, with a few exceptions, no QSL responses have been received from numbers stations by shortwave listeners who sent reception reports to said stations, which is the expected behavior of a non-clandestine station.
Click here to go to a the Conet Project, a Numbers Stations recording site.
The best known of the numbers stations was the "Linconlshire Poacher", so called because it used two bars from the English folk song "The Lincolnshire Poacher" as an "Interval Signal". It was thought to have been run by the British Secret Intelligence Service.
In 2001, the United States tried the Cuban Five on the charge of spying for Cuba. That group had received and decoded messages that had been broadcast from Cuban numbers stations. Also in 2001, Ana Belen Montes, a senior US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was arrested and charged with espionage. The federal prosecutors alleged that Montes was able to communicate with the Cuban Intelligence Directorate through encoded messages, with instructions being received through "encrypted shortwave transmissions from Cuba".Just go to stage 1...
In 2006, Carlos Alvarez and his wife, Elsa, were arrested and charged with espionage. The U.S. District Court Florida stated that "defendants would receive assignments via shortwave radio transmissions". In June 2003, the United States similarly charged Walter Kendall Myers with conspiracy to spy for Cuba and receiving and decoding messages broadcast from a numbers station operated by the Cuban Intelligence Directorate to further that conspiracy.
Generally, numbers stations follow a basic format, although there are many differences in details between stations. The prelude, introduction, or call-up of a transmission (from which stations' informal nicknames are often derived) includes some kind of identifier, either for the station itself and/or for the intended recipient. This can take the form of numeric or radio-alphabet "code names" (e.g. "Charlie India Oscar", "250 250 250", "Six-Niner-Zero-Oblique-Five-Four"), characteristic phrases (e.g. "¡Atención!", "Achtung!", "Ready? Ready?", "1234567890"), and sometimes musical or electronic sounds (e.g. "The Lincolnshire Poacher", "Magnetic Fields"). Sometimes, as in the case of the Israeli radio-alphabet stations, the prelude can also signify the nature or priority of the message to follow (e.g., [hypothetically] "Charlie India Oscar-2", indicating that no message follows). Often the prelude repeats for a period before the body of the message begins.
After the prelude, there is usually an announcement of the number of number-groups in the message, the page to be used from the one-time pad, or other pertinent information. The groups are then recited. Groups are usually either four or five digits of radio-alphabet letters. The groups are typically repeated, either by reading each group twice, or by repeating the entire message as a whole. Some stations send more than one message during a transmission. In this case, some or all of the above process is repeated, with different contents.
Finally, after all the messages have been sent, the station will sign off in some characteristic fashion. Usually it will simply be some form of the word "end" in whatever language the station uses (e.g., "End of message; End of transmission", "Ende", "Fini", "Final", "конец"). Some stations, especially those thought to originate from the former Soviet Union, end with a series of zeros, e.g., "00000" "000 000"; others end with music or other sounds.
These stations often use the Phonetic Alphabet outlined in the chart below. The use of this alphabet helps the message to be readable even during times of poor radio propagation and/or interference. It also helps to distinguish between "G" and "C" and so forth. For example, G C would be "Golf Charlie".
It has been reported that the United States used numbers stations to communicate encoded information to persons in other countries. There are also claims that State Department operated stations, such as KKN50 and KKN44, used to broadcast similar "numbers" messages or related traffic.
If you, as a Geocacher, do not know what a "Dead Drop" is - YOU GOTTA READ THIS! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_drop
For more go to https://archive.org/details/ird059
and/or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1XuKA8Kj4w
