Introduction to Monitoring Russian Military HF Frequencies

I have heard more Russian activity on the naval aviation (11354) and Air Force (11360) frequencies this afternoon. I've actually been using my Tecsun PL660 and homemade passive loop in the kitchen while baking a cake! I am starting to get my head around the numbers and, once you learn the pattern, it's not too hard to grasp. The best site I have found for learning is here. You will definitely need a tape recorder. I have a few in the shack, but for portable ops like this afternoon I use a small Sony one with a 30min tape. It was only 50p at a tabletop sale and has given me hours of deciphered messages!

But even if you think learning Russian numbers is out of the question, you can easily learn to identify the Air Force Base callsigns. I will try and post a comprehensive list later if I remember, but for starters listen for these words, spoken at the beginning of transmissions:

"Ya Karsar, priyom"

This means:

"This is KORSAR, go ahead"

KORSAR is the callsign for Pskov AFB in NW Russia and about 99% of all the calls I've heard are to here.
DAVLENIE is the callsign for Taganrog AFB near Ukraine in SW Russia

At some point you will hear:

"Davlenie ya karsar priyom"

This means:

"DAVLENIE this is KORSAR, go ahead"

The aircraft serial numbers are given as either individual numbers. Eg

"syem vosyem syem pyat syem" (7 8 7 5 7)

or as compound numbers and individual numbers. Eg serial #78000:

syem-deesyat-vosyem (78)
nul nul nul (000)

At the end of the transmission I am hearing "das viagem" which I presume is something like  "Have a safe flight"......

SUCCESS!

I was looking at the Ilyushin IL76 production list just now and managed to find one of the serials I heard this afternoon. So the log details are:

16JUN15 11360.0KHZ USB Korsar wkg 78757 IL76MD Military Transport

Here she is: