UVB-76 - The Buzzer Breakdown - 25 July 2016

"The Buzzer" is a famous and mysterious shortwave radio station. Suddenly, something very strange happened... A technical failure? This is the original recording of a bizarre breakdown.

Recorded: 25 July 2016

Breakdown: 1:45 min

Restart: 5:10 min

Video: English / German

[TiberianFiend]

For them to replace it that fast means that someone has to be listening to this 24/7. What an irritating job that must be.

[VinchVolt]

What's interesting to note is that the buzzer's actually been gradually decreasing in both speed and pitch over the last 40-something years; if you listen to the earliest recording from 1976, the buzzer's more like a fast, high-pitched beep. Compare that to recordings from 1984, 1991, 2000, 2002, and even this one, made just two years ago, and you can tell that as the years went on, the beep's grown slower and lower until it eventually became the buzz we know today. Maybe the hardware failure recorded here might have some relation to that.

[werdcore]

Me: *watches this full volume at 1am*
The demons in my closet: *twerking*

[rionthemagnificent]

Dammit Ivan! You spilled vodka on the Transmitter again!

[kuzey]

Can you imagine you are alone in a forest camping and your radio suddenly gets to this frequency and stucks there for a solid 5 minutes

[Батько]

Когда-нибудь он настроит свою гитару...

[button]

This was lowkey a bop bro 😩💕💕
Please drop another album soon this shit was fire🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[mustang]

I'm watching a video about radio static. What am I doing with my life?

[Macintrasher]

I've heard tale that the Buzzer really isn't more than a microphone in front of a buzzing device in order to keep it simple, reliable and foolproof and to allow for immediate communication with agents on the field when needed, especially given the reports of background noises in the past, and this recording has what sounds like the sound of a fan in the background after each buzz, so I would believe it to a certain degree. I noticed from the very beginning of the vid that after each buzz, I can hear it almost hesitating; it wasn't as precise as it should've been, it slightly hiccups every now and then, like a car that occasionally misfires. Maybe this was an on-air failure of the auditory device...? I can't explain the squeak before the transmission cuts out at the 2:00 mark, but it's like they slammed the shut-off button, took out the broken buzzer, got a new one, tested it real quick, and when they knew it worked, plunked it in front of the microphone. If you listen at 5:11 you can hear when the transmitter kicks back in and everything resumes as it was, complete with the background hum/fan.


We'll likely never know the answer, but it's so much fun to speculate! Creepy!

[spleniuscervicis]

I have been an insomniac my entire life. When I was a kid I spent a lot of that wake time at late night and early morning listening to shortwave radio. It was during the Cold War and before the fall of the Soviet Bloc, so besides the BBC, evangelical US radio, East German radio, Radio Habana Cuba, the Voice of America, and Radio Moscow, I could catch, some regularly, other times randomly, pattern transmissions, morse code transmissions, number transmission, apparently random codeword transmissions, and other weird crap. Sadly lots of concrete skyscrapers were built around me and I lost a lot of reception, among other developments. They were such fun times with the headphones. Each generation loses so much. My great-grandfather was a pioneer of radio, telegraphs, and phone (and eventually cinema) develeopments since the 19th century, my grandfather also worked with radio and he was several times the president of the national amateur radio society, my dad had his sound toys which are now gone, and now my daughter only wants to watch Peppa Pig...

[ZeithammerOG]

Friend: What kind of music do u like?
Me:

[cones]

2:00 was literally the most wholesome thing I heard today, thank you.

[jukeboxdude]

Two days ago it broke down for 15 hours on 07/14/22. I was tuned in and it just abruptly shut off at 19:00:23 UTC followed by hours of heavy noise and feedback. They eventually started messing with it. You could hear the mic being bumped around for several hours. They made it work, but would buzz very weak once every 2-3 minutes. They eventually got on the radio or phone and were trying to get it going. You could tell the operator was getting frustrated and gave up. They just stopped talking and the buzzer stopped. An hour of dead silence goes by and then some bumping around started. They started the buzzer up and it was all messed up for about 2 minutes. Shut it off and started the beeper which worked fine, but shut it off quickly. Several hours of dead silence goes by and then the beeper just starts up at 10:18:29 and ran it until they fixed the buzzer and started it back up at 11:01:56. The buzzer malfunctioned and broke down several times, but they quickly got it backup each time. They obviously don't like using the beeper.

[MeritSeto]

I love to hear the station, because the buzz has an very calming effect on me, but every time something happens it sends shivers down my spine :D

[stanley_]

I mean, in 40 years something was bound to stop working.

[ayther]

everybody gangsta til all of these buzzers troughout the years spelled out "D-E-E-Z N-U-T-S"

[jsaczek]

Me: i will go to sleep early tonight
Me at 3am:

[MybeautifulandamazingPrincess]

This is creepy as hell, doesn't help I'm watching this video at 2AM
Sounds like something from an alien attack or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[marks]

In mother russia, radio listens to you!

[natalistrelnikova]

Оу, и это вы считаете страшным? Хехе, жизнь в России в 2020 - вот что действительно страшно