Digital Digest 2014: How and where to intercept secret digital communications on shortwave radio

These articles appeared originally as Digital HF: Intercept & Analyze, a monthly column in the pages of US radio listener’s magazine The Spectrum Monitor from January to December 2014. They are reproduced here with only minor editing and updating.
Digital HF: Intercept & Analyze and its predecessor of 15 years, Monitoring Times magazine’s Digital Digest, has sought to shine a light on the many organizations using digital communications techniques on shortwave (HF) radio by documenting their operating habits, frequencies and schedules used, and analyzing the digital systems they employ. If you are interested in finding ministries of foreign affairs, commercial businesses, embassies, armies, air forces, navies, multinational peacekeepers, police, intelligence agencies, customs and border patrol units, and many humanitarian aid and other NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) on HF radio and want to know how they work, this book is for you. This volume covers topics as diverse as monitoring shipping with GMDSS/DSC and SITOR-B, Egyptian embassies, monitoring aircraft through HF DataLink, MIL-STD-188-141A ALE Automatic Link Establishment decoding and ALE networks of US Air Force, US State Department, US Federal Emergency Management Agency, Swiss embassies, Finnish embassies, Chinese embassies, Australian Police, Chilean Navy, the widely heard Russian Forces AT3004D modem, Czech Intelligence, decoding the STANAG4285 modem, French Forces, a number of US high-level strategic networks, and a number of mystery networks that remain unidentified.