Utility stations are not meant to be heard by the "normal" listener. Possible users are:
- maritime stations
- aviation
- meteorological networks
- ministeries of interior and foreign affairs
- news agencies
- military
and many others.

Nearly all services rely, beside voice communications, on digital modes. Many of them may be decoded, like picture transmissions, meteo bulletins or aviation status messages, but the trend goes towards fast and sophisticated modes, which can not be read by amateur equipment. Even some meteo services use encoded FAX mode - undecoded pictures are blurred.

20 years ago all the News Agencies as well as many meteo stations could be heard with their plain language RTTY transmissions. That's over. A few countries still use shortwaves for their diplomatic messages, but the modes ask for stable receivers and decoding software.

For these reasons I decided for a small selection of utility transmission examples, which, to a great extent, cannot be heard again. This includes for example Morse transmissions from European coastal stations or news agencies with messages in RTTY mode. Only Meteo FAX transmissions still are daily disseminated.

Here you will find more about:

News Agencies FAX and RTTY

Diplo Services RTTY

Maritime Services RTTY and Morse

Meteo FAX

Military Users RTTY