INTRODUCTION - Prompted by the excellent article entitled 'The Friday Night Fraulein - A Look at G7 by P.S. from Saffron Walden in ENIGMA 16 I thought I would write an addendum to the article about the habits of- The Spanish Man. The G7 article's "Family Relationships" section states that 'G7's activities are restricted to "null messages" on "Fridays", but as I will demonstrate here, a closer look at the station has proved very different. Although I've only been monitoring G7's activities for around one year I can cast some light on this family group.

FORMAT In terms of transmission format, V7 does follow the same message and null-message format of it's sister G7, aside from the omission of the procedural words. The voice used is male and Spanish is the language used.

The numbers and pronunciation in use are as follows:

NUMBER SPANISH PRONOUNCED
ONE UNO oon-oh
TWO DOS doss
THREE TRES traize
FOUR CUATRO kwattro
FIVE CINCO tchink-oh
SIX SEIS saise
SEVEN SIETE see-ay tay
EIGHT OCHO otch-oh
NINE NUEVE noo-y-vey
ZERO ZERO sse-ro

The voice used is very thin sounding and can sometimes be mistaken for a female.

SCHEDULE The schedule we will concentrate on (others do operate) can be heard Tuesdays and Thursdays of each week at 06.00 UTC with repeats at 06.10 for a null message and at 06.20 and 06.40 for messages with traffic (longer messages could delay these start times by 5 minute intervals). Frequency selection is the reverse of that described for G7 in that the transmission frequencies of the repeats move progressively higher, usually by a whole MHz or more (this is due to propagation conditions at this time of day). During the period that I have monitored V7 the lowest frequency selected was 9052 kHz and the highest 14487 kHz (also regularly used by MI6 station E3). Virtually all the frequencies that are used by V7 fall in the fixed services bands (standard Russian practice). V7 follows the same "frequency ID" pattern of its sister G7 in that all three figure schedule numbers are made up of the 100 kHz placed figures of the appropriate frequencies. See example below. It is also worth noting that the last two digits of the frequency are virtually always the same for the repeats.

Example. Taken from the March 1999 transmission.
06.00 11602 kHz Callup-6 Last two digits 02
06.20 12202 kHz 2 of frequency 02
06.40 13902 kHz 9 02

Serial Number (SN) = 629

This system without doubt assists the recipient in locating the 2nd and 3rd frequency for the repeats without prior knowledge of the new frequency selection.

 TRAFFlC ANALYSIS - During a 10 month period of monitoring there have been 18 different messages sent, most of which are repeated on the next day of the schedule and some are repeated a second time twice. Only once during the 10 month period was a message not repeated on the next scheduled day. For the same period the group counts of the messages have ranged from 27 to 106 five figure groups. The normal average message group count is around 50.

ANOMALIES & OBSERVATIONS

21 JUL 98 (Tue) - 1st repeat sent on 12161 kHz instead of 12061 kHz as per the frequency lD/Schedule Number. Correct frequency (12061) used for rest of month. (Wrongly set 100 kHz frequency dial).

06 AUG 98 (Thu) - While waiting for the 2nd repeat on 13366 kHz at 06.40, a family member station M 12 started a null message transmission on the frequency at 06.30. If M12 had sent message traffic it would have clashed with V7's repeat.

15 SEP 98 (Tue) - Occasional transmitter problems and significant drops in signal strength.

24 DEC 98 - Very poor modulation noted and the transmitter sounded very rough.

05 JAN 99 (Tue) - Neither the message or its 2 repeats provided a full copy of the message here - ongoing transmitter problems?

07 JAN 99 (Tue) - (Former engineer sent to Siberia) huge improvement in signal strength - transmitter repair programme?

14 JAN 99 (Thu) - Transmitter on frequency (9072 kHz) but there was no modulation for the whole transmission. Left frequency (as if sending a null message) and appeared on 2nd frequency (10472 kHz) - still no modulation and the transmitter went off as if a null message had been sent.

19 JAN 99 (Thu) - Longest GC (106) noted in 10 months - longest in previous 9 months was 77.

21 JAN 99 (Thu) - Massive improvement of signal noted. Repairs carried out?

26 JAN 99 (Tue) - Different voice than normal - sounded much younger and possibly live?

02 FEB 99 (Tue) - Voice has returned to normal - New tape from HQ? All transmitter and modulation problems seem to have been resolved for now.

04 MAR 99 (Thu) -06.20 started on 12202 kHz with schedule 629 at 0622. l found a parallel transmission on 11291 kHz in the Aeronautical Service frequency allocation and not in the Fixed Service allocation as is usual for V7 Parallel never noted before. (Probably a transmitter feed error. May imply operation from a Russian Air force site). The third sending on 13902 kHz had no known parallel?

01 APR 99 (Thu) - First group of message 11111 (stutter group), GC 136 the highest for over a year (previous high 106)

06 MAY 99 (Thu) - GC 149. which took over 25 minutes to send. A new all time high.