When I was ten years old, my Dad bought a shortwave radio. It
wasn't anything as elaborate as the setup in the picture, it was
just a portable radio with a whip antenna. I was totally fascinated
with it. At first, I was happy just listening to the powerful
broadcast stations on shortwave. I'd tune in the BBC World Service,
Deutsche Welle, Radio Moscow, and Radio Havana Cuba. There were
also non-English language broadcasts, where I'd hear exotic
languages and even more exotic music.
Then I started tuning outside of the main shortwave broadcast
bands. My simple radio couldn't receive SSB so I missed out on a
lot of the "utility" stations, but there was one station that
caught my attention. It was a female voice, reading lists of
numbers in Spanish.
The first time I heard her, she was already well into the
broadcast. It was just numbers, five at a time. Then a short pause,
and five more numbers. Finally I heard her say something that
sounded like "feenahl, feenahl," and the broadcast stopped.
I turned off the radio but left the tuning dial untouched, and
the next night I turned it on a little earlier. There was a tune
playing. Not real music, just a four-note sequence that sounded
like a toy music box. Sort of "ping pong, ding dong," over and over
again. I left it playing while I did my homework, and after a while
I got what I was hoping for: the Spanish lady was back!
This time I heard what I later learned was the standard format
for this
type of broadcast. It started with her repeating the word
"Attencion!" several times. Then she went into her five-digit sets
of numbers, and eventually ended with "Final! Final!"
I figured that this had to be some kind of code. I started
listening for her every night, and writing down the strings of
numbers. What could this be? Instructions to spies? As hard as I
tried, I could never crack the code. I later learned that these
stations use an encoding method called a one time pad, which
is virtually impossible to crack. (Don't worry, I used something
more easily cracked for this puzzle.) These early attempts at
code-breaking were the start of my fascination with numbers and
ciphers that
continues to this day.It was also the beginning of a life-long
interest in radio.
To find this cache, you'll need to solve two puzzles. All the
information you need to solve the first puzzle is on this page.
When you have solved that puzzle, you will have a set of
coordinates and the frequency of a radio transmitter. The
transmitter operates in the FM broadcast band, so you can easily
pick it up on your car radio. However, it operates under FCC Part 15
rules, which means it has a very limited range. So you will
need to tune your radio to that frequency, go to those coordinates,
and record the transmission that you will hear.
Once you have the series of numbers from the transmission, you
will have to decrypt it to reveal the final location of the cache.
It's a log-only micro, so bring a pen or a pencil with you!
There's also something that precedes the list
of numbers... you'll need that, too!