The LF Notebook - Mailbag, News and Comments (From THE LOWDOWN, Aug. 1996) John H. Davis, Box 367, Warm Springs, GA 31830 -E-mail - johnhdavis@aol.com -Longwave BBS - 706-672-0360 -Fax - (706) 672-0964 -World Wide Web http://users.aol.com/lwcanews/ Dog Days of August? No self-respecting pooch would claim them. I wish I knew when they're supposed to end, however. They're only getting a good start as I write this, near the end of August. Summer doldrums finally affected correspondence for this column. It would have been among the slimmer ones of the past two years, were it not for a couple of lengthier messages. Last time I mentioned how busy the BBS had been. Well, the day after I mailed the column, the Olympics opened. And from that time until now, we've had seven users log on. Woof! Most of the country is just a few weeks away from autumn, so it's time to make plans for the season and get word to others. I hope to be ready to handle a flood of news next month, so dig out those pens and keyboards. Electric Enigma Ordering. Several folks saw the review of the natural radio CD set last month, but didn't have the ordering information from the July issue. Unless you live near a big-city bank that can issue cheques in Pounds Sterling, your best bet is plastic. Visa, Mastercard, et al, will free you of the confusion of exchange rates. They'll also free you of a few of your dollars in service charges--but not too many. Mail, phone, or fax the type of card, account number, and expiration date ("expiry" in English English) to THESE Records, 112 Brook Drive, London SE11 4TQ, England (Telephone 44+171+587+5349; Facsimile 44+171+582+5278). The price is 18.50 Pounds Sterling plus 3.00 Pounds shipping. (Though exchange rates may vary, it was less than $35 total on my bank card bill. Not bad for a dual CD set, considering what I've paid for some dual CD's at Blockbuster!) (By the way, Akin Fernandez, CEO of Irdial-Disc, tells me "Your review is not only the first American review, but it's the first one in the world!" So, the LWCA has another first to its credit.) NDB DXers Note. If nondirectional beacons are your primary targets for longwave DX, you may remember with considerable fondness Sheldon Remington's series, "On the Art of NDB DXing," that ran in The LOWDOWN during the late 1980's. If you weren't a member at that time, you may be pleased to know that the text of the series has been archived on Steve McGreevy's Natural Radio Home Page (http://www.netcom.com/~spmcgrvy/). It also contains articles on VLF monitoring, news of Steve's recording expeditions, and audio samples. HAARPing On Other Topics. For sake of variety, I thought we might put the Mailbag ahead of the other feature departments this month. Near the end of this column, check out the Periodical Shelf for sources of information on the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project (HAARP) in Alaska. On To The Mailbag -Will Payne (YWK, Crossroads, GA) was kept occupied earlier this summer by the successful maiden flight of the Hercules II at Lockheed Martin, a business trip out West, a Field Day expedition, "and also getting local Hams introduced to the joys of life above 10,000 MHz." Surplus microwave motion detectors from Dayton were a hit at Field Day. "I threw together a $25 kit to convert a people-detector and a scanner into a full duplex voice transceiver on 10235 / 10265 MHz and several contacts were completed on Field Day, up to 15 miles. Bob Confrey (EDJ) could not attend the tuneup session, and Bob is the only one who has access to a microwave freq counter. Nonetheless, the folks who par- ticipated enjoyed the novelty of the band." "Also on Field Day, I brought my Octoloop, a rolled up 500 ft 12 turn loop, a Rycomm 6040, and some homebrew whistler stuff, all up to the top of Pigeon Mountain in northwest Georgia, just west of LaFayette. The location was almost free of 60Hz hum. I heard no whistlers, and conditions only got a bit tweeky at night and early AM, but I was so happy to be rid of the EEVIL HUMM that I listened enthralled all night to pops and crashes. None of my usual complex juggling of BFOs and up/down frequency conversions thru crystal filters etc., was required. Just a loop and a good homebrew AD620 amp into a Radio Shack pocket speaker amp." "The other Hams thought sferic listening was interesting and bizarre, and they all wanted to see how it works. Two other hams had taken some of my equipment to other sites, but had hum trouble. Alan Padgett, the Park Ranger, brought out his Canadian built Cave Radios, which operate on 185 kHz SSB, and they turned out to be CB rigs with a transverter using a length of 16/3 cord for a 3 turn loop. The wire loop can be spread over a 1 meter square spoked wood frame or simply doubled and slung over the shoulder. The rigs are set up for guys doing cave rescue. They want a turnkey cave radio that doesn't require an engineer to operate." "Pigeon Mountain is as far from AC power as I have ever been, maybe 5 miles from a small town. I envy those who go to the wilderness frequently." "I really plan to get back on (ULF monitoring), as my preliminary look has turned up several things whch pique my curiosity. One is the persistent signal at 1/3 Hz which shows up in every record since my MK II circuit." "I did finally build a DC coupled preamp out of an AD620, and it performs marvelously for sferic listning with the Octoloop. I plan to use it for the front end of my MK IV reciever on ULF along with a 60 Hz passive notch filter. I worked on some Bridged-Tee passive notches, but just a series LC across the input is the best thing which I really got working so far. MK IV will use the passive notch against the EEVILL HUMM to allow my AD620 balanced front end with no integration to operate at higher gain while staying within the available dynamic range. Once the signal has been amplified in a flat (but 60 Hz notched) LNA, then I will bring it indoors and apply DC drift rejection and MAX281 filters and more gain and finally data acquisition and software signal processing. The hot trick is to get some good, low noise (especially low 1/f flicker noise!) DC stable gain right up front. This first stage SHOULD BE A BRICK, no DC balance control, no adjustments at all. All that stuff goes in later stages. My first stage is mounted alone in a cast metal box." "The software I have written is obscure and finicky, but you can post it anyway." (Looks intriguing, and I hope to do so this month at last. Many additional notes from Will are likely to be included on the BBS. -JHD) His recordings continue to show the 1/3 Hz signal, "in spite of my hardware deficiencies. The signal is certainly artificial, I just don't know if it is distant, local or even internal. With all the folks looking for Schumann resonance, a distant 1/3 Hz source ought to have been independently observed by now. Anybody see it? Also have apocryphal reports of 3 Hz signal (2Hz/ 4Hz FSK data) being transmitted. My A/D sample rate does not go that fast, but did anybody see that one?" "I hope soon to get the MK IV installed and continuous recordings rolling in. YWK operates sporadically due to the EMI it causes." -Pierre Thomson (mmommsen@mhv.net) is among several correspondents this past month who note that, despite QRN, propagation at LF and MF has not been as dead as one might expect in summer. He's also working on a beacon for this season, probably on 184.320 kHz, because of the convenience of using an integrated crystal oscillator on 1.8432 MHz followed by a divide-by-10 circuit and PA. "The main reason behind my beacon plans is the lack of LF beacons in this geographic area (southeast upstate NY). I have never yet heard any LF beacons, and from the Net postings I see, many others also have not. My receiver is not the greatest (IC-751A with longwire) but I have picked up plenty of DX NDBs up into northern Canada. I hear TUK on 194 deafeningly, and plenty of GWEN signals below 180." He has also been exploring the wonderful (?) world of buoy beacons at the Top End, with the result "I listened farther up, and was soon rewarded with a half dozen more beacons up to 1741 and some faint sigs even higher. I did a bit of research in the CFR, and found a provision for buoy beacons specifical- ly for cable location {Emphasis mine. -JHD}. They are allowed up to 30 watts, with no antenna restrictions except practical ones! Anyway, it's an interesting study." "And LF/MF isn't dead. I heard a few familiar Canadian NDB's like Rigolet on the Newfoundland coast and La Grande-4 in central Quebec." On August 17, "I heard a Euro broadcast on 183 KHz; first I've heard in a while! Things must be starting to improve, as the static begins to decline with the tempera- ture." -Brice Anderson (BA, IE; Box 14, Lancaster IL 62855) hasn't had similar results at LF. YHO was the last station heard, way back on April 10, and he has not received any "heard" reports himself. The ubiquitous PLCs are still strong, though. Brice finds mornings just after sunrise, and evenings before sunset, to be the most profitable times to listen during QRN season. Parts are on hand for a new MedFER antenna, as soon as the weather cools. BA has been on most of July and August, though disconnected for most storms. One recent storm was an exception, but afterward "I was amazed to find nothing damaged, and the beacon running fine." This hasn't always been the case, unfortunately, even with the antenna disconnected. Thank goodness for the occassional exception! -It was good to hear this month from Steve McDonald (VE7SL; 3319 Glasgow St., Port Coquitlam, BC V3B 4K8 Canada; e-mail: jsm@deepcove.com), who is looking for some of the earlier versions of Ken Cornell's Low and Medium Frequency Radio Scrapbook. "I would like anything from Issue 1 - 7, especially the early ones. If there are any for sale, or if I could borrow them temporarily for photocopying, perhaps they could e-mail me or drop me a note." -When it comes to unique and intriguing expeditions, Steve McGreevy (spmcgrvy@ix.netcom.com) is the guy to find them. He's been planning another trip north to record solar-minmum VLF in the auroral zone. But recently he was invited on a filming expedition to Mexico, starting August 20 for 10 days to video "wierd lights associated with UFO's; they are similar to Marfa Lights, I surmise. I could then hold-off my north trip until after Labor Day (and still have fairly OK weather for a few weeks--I hate to hold-off longer though...) Hmmm, decisions, decisions." -Robert Laney (RL; e-mail: RLLaney@aol.com) says prospects of thunderstorms while he's at work has kept RL off much of the time. "I'm fully retired from one career and working full-time + on a 'second career.' (Some of my friends are fully retired and enjoying smelling the roses, what's wrong with me?)" "I still plan to do some top-hat work on the antenna and some loading coil experimenting by this fall. Along these lines, I really appreciated a couple articles in the July LOWDOWN--the one on coils by Bill Bowers and remote precision base current meter by Max Carter. Couldn't have come at a better time. Proper tuning in the LF region is much more critical than I first thought it would be. I would appreciate hearing how other operators tune their setups." -Bernie A. Pridgeon (YD, KQ4YD; e-mail: kq4yd@juno.com) announces that he now has E-mail, thanks to JUNO. "I knew if I waited long enough somebody would come up with something free, HI HI. YD is still pecking away on 187.5, except for occasional maintenance. Been thinking about a new antenna but I will probably wait until the weather cools off. The QRN is terrible here, storms just about every day. I still pull in RED consistently, but no others except for NDB's." -Lyle Koehler (LEK; Aitkin, MN; e-mail: lek@juno.com) reports, "The only stations heard here in the last month were SAM, with a good daytime LF signal, and STLMO, who can still be heard between static crashes some nights." He also notes, "Ken Cornell's Scrapbook got a nice writeup in the August QST. That should also spark some more interest in LF and MF activities." Lyle now has Internet access, courtesy of a provider in the nearby town of Emily; and, a second e-mail address, k0lr@emily.net, "when the Internet isn't having massive problems." BPSK Update Cliff Buttschardt (ex-W6HDO, now K7RR; e-mail at either cbuttsch@juno.com or cbuttsch@slonet.org) reports this month, "Bill (Lake) and I continue to experiment. We have determined that 160 meters is just too poor a path for us but we do not care to abandon 1844." "Thanks for mentioning 184.3 KHz. All of us would like to see just how clear this is over the countryside. Dave Curry's idea of sharing beacon on the minute is a good one that needs consideration." "Three more Californians and one prospective Hawaiian have joined in the HDO(null) listening efforts. All three were in Northern California and over 300 miles path length. WA6FZH/KH6 has gotten software and is building the DeCarle board. I expect he will be doing extensive listening tests as time goes on. There is no reason we can not have W6 to KH6 results." Spaced Out Again We mentioned a couple of months ago the loss of the Cluster magnetosphere exploration satellites when the new Ariane rocket exploded. There's word now that Cluster 5 is in the works, to be renamed Phoenix after the mythological bird. It's not clear whether ESA will build additional copies of the new engineering prototype, or use mini-satellites to measure other parameters needed for the project. And in the fait accompli department, NASA succeeded in getting the Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer (FAST) into orbit on August 21. The satellite will measure particle acceleration in auroral regions on very short time scales. The bird was two years late getting into space, but a redesigned Pegasus XL 3-stage winged rocket, dropped from an L-1011 13 km over the Pacific Ocean, finally did the trick. The Periodical Shelf -If you've been looking for authoritative information on the HAARP experiments up in Alaska (which do have the potential to affect phase of VLF signals traveling over the region, and perhaps natural-radio emissions of the aurora, in addition to HF and VHF propagation), you would not have found it in an article from the July 73 magazine. The author of that piece was convinced it's all a secret weather-control experiment...and over-the-horizon radar was a Soviet mind-control project. (Just for the real record, the so-called "Russian woodpecker" is far from all Russian. The U.S. OTH systems can be used for detecting missiles and surface ships, to remote sensing of wave height and motion for meteorology.) Fortunately, the real record on HAARP is set straight in the September issue of QST, and in the http://server5550.itd.nrl.navy.mil/haarp.html Web site. The article is worth your attention, and the Web page provides background and test schedules. -If magnetic fields attract you, check out Don Lancaster's column in the September Electronics Now for info on using the FGM-1 magnetic field sensor from the British firm, SCL. Its output is a square wave whose frequency varies proportionally with field strength. Shameless Promotion of Georgia Dept. The Olympics have moved on to Australia, and the Paralympics are now a warm memory. Despite the one tragic incident at Centennial Olympic Park, I'm proud to say the people of Atlanta and all our visitors worked together to keep the spirit of the Olympics alive and well. Whatever carping you heard from the press about early inconveniences, spectators and competitors alike praised Georgia hospitality. * Snared in the Web. I know some of you visited the Longwave Home Page on the World Wide Web this past month. While there, I hope you also checked out our Olympic and Paralympic page, by clicking the image at the top of the regular page. During the Olympics, the page was mainly a gateway to other Olympic infor- mation sources. For the Paralympics, I tried to provide not only links, but also more detailed coverage of some aspects (notably, the Paralympic torch relay) than was available from other sources. Many of the photos I was antici- pating weren't available on a timely basis, but overall, it was OK. If you didn't tour the Olympic/Paralympic page before, I'll leave all the material on the server through September. Also, if any of you have been curious about the organization I work for, you can now find their home page on the Web at http://www.gpb.org/ and learn more than you probably wanted to know about Georgia Public Broadcasting. One more joyous occassion. Georgians are hardly done celebrating yet! On Labor Day weekend, some hundreds of folks will complete a week-long march from Americus, Georgia, to Atlanta, where the 20th anniversary of Habitat for Humanity will be celebrated. Americus is where Habitat began, as a way for Christians to apply their faith by helping the poor to construct their own homes. Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford are active supporters, and Habitat is now working in 30-some countries around the world. A local collaboration of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish congregations expect to complete the 50,000th house in Florida in mid-September. Footnote. Interesting though it all may be to me, I hope we'll have less of my news and more of your news next month. Til then, 73. - - -