The station that uses the callsign: "MDZhB", (formerly UVB-76), is of a military origin. It is a C2 command and control station belonging to the Russian Armed Forces.

It transmits orders which are to be received by smaller military stations; such as training orders or on very rare occasions emergency messages. These are called "Monolyth" messages. They are also "Для" (romanization: Dyla) which means "For". These are transmission quality request messages - which the recipient must respond back to central command via wires lines.

The buzzing or humming that you hear is a channel marker, and it is designed to prevent other radio operators from occupying that frequency. They are many other networks like MDZhB, but most of them do not have channel markers, as they are mainly smaller networks. Only the larger district-level networks have markers... (Continued below)

Each military district in Russia is assigned a C2 network to it. MDZhB is the C2 network of the Western Military District, and they are four C2 networks in total. The C2 networks which operate in other districts are: "8S1SCH", (nickname: The Pip), which is dedicated to the Southern Military District. There is also "ALFA45", (nickname: The Squeaky Wheel), which was originally dedicated to the Northern Military District, but has since been assigned to the Western Military District. Lastly there is Plavets-41 which belongs to the Central Military District.

You might have noticed, or at least heard, that MDZhB stopped transmitting for a short while in
September 2010, and the callsign: UVB-76 was discontinued once it had returned. This was because of a merge between two previous military districts. This is why the original transmitter site located in Povarovo, just outside of Moscow, is no longer used. MDZhB has moved to a new transmitter site.

Is Silent