THE LF NOTEBOOK #46 (From THE LOWDOWN, January, 1997) The Mailbag, News and Comments About LF Radio, Etc. John H. Davis, Box 367, Warm Springs, GA 31830 - E-mail - johnhdavis@aol.com - Longwave BBS - 706-672-0360 -World Wide Web http://members.aol.com/lwcanews/ Here's hoping that you and yours had a great holiday...whichever ones you may have observed in December...and that a wonderful new year is headed your way! The Longwave Home Page (see above) now has further improvements. The LF Aero-Marine Utilities section now has a page of its own, for instance. You can get to the Coast Guard page (http://www.navcen.uscg.mil/), where you can obtain current details of operating DGPS beacons, including the recently activated one in Oklahoma. You can also link to Robert Kramer's page of LF loggings and articles. In the Natural Radio section, you can study several more university research projects involving solar activity, the ionosphere, and the magnetosphere. (There are some really fascinating things going on out there in the magnetosphere, by the way.) The Coast Guard page was brought to my attention by Martin C. Poppe at Cambridge Engineering (http://www.together. com/~cei/). Thanks to everyone who has been calling these Web sites to our attention. Speaking of solar activity, it took a significant upturn for several days in late November, with sunspot numbers and flux higher than we've seen in quite some time. Early December was quiet again, but we can perhaps expect another upturn roughly at Christmas time, then relative quiet for a little while at the New Year. A couple of months ago, I mentioned the long sunspot drought. While I called it a "spotless record" as a play on words, it wasn't literally a record. This century's record was 92 days in 1913. This fall was the longest such spell since 1933, though. After about six weeks, there was a brief break in the drought sometime in October...for all of a few hours! Some forecasters are apparently predicting a rapid rise in the new cycle, perhaps peaking in as little as four years; that is, sometime in 2000 or 2001. * Brace yourselves! Several months ago, we mentioned that author Karl Thurber, W8FX, was working on an article about longwave, LowFERs, MedFERs, and related topics for Popular Electronics. Well, it's here, in the February, 1997, issue at newsstands now. And what extensive coverage! The magazine allowed Karl a remarkable 10 pages to tell the story. This ought to trigger a welcome influx of interest in the low-down frequencies. Check it out. Karl's next project is an article on natural radio, earthquake and solar flare activities, underground communications and man-made VLF transmissions. Many things to cover this month, so we'll get right to business. I'll save the planned DDS VFO and magnetometer feature material for next time, since I think there are some other articles waiting in the wings. We also have a lot of members' news, plans, and ideas to get in this time. Your participation is always appreciated. On To The Mailbag -Stephen P. McGreevy (New address: 604 North F Street #1, Lakeview, OR 97630-1127 USA; 541-947-5508; New e-mail: vlfradio@triax.com) has relocated, and greets us with: "I hope everyone is well during this hectic part of the year leading up to Christmas, etc. Please note my new e-mail address via a local Internet provider here in Lakeview, Oregon. My other e-mail address is still valid for the time being as is is now plastered on my CD release and as such is ever-spreading all over the world. But, netcom is a toll-call from here so I prefer use of the new TRIAX e-mail address from now on. Thanks, and I wish all of you a fine Holiday Season. As of today, there is still about 1 inch (2.2 cm) of snow on the ground, but melting fast in the dry climate, especially when the warm air blows up from California 13 miles to the south." "RR is here, but I dont think it will go on - unless from 3 am onward or whatever. Frank Cathell wants to hear it from here. I have a good wire up, but no real MedFER antenna, and dont feel up to it now. Too busy enjoying the far superior trans-pacific MW reception here (and LW) due to very low horizon to west. Beautiful sunsets here most days, even if cloudy--sun always seems to slip underneath clouds and shine, if but for 5 minutes..." -Brice Anderson (BA, IE; Lancaster, IL) observes that conditions are improving on both LF and MF, but "I could hear more beacons if my neighbors didn't use their TVs so much, and if that light dimmer, wherever it is, would stay off." On LF, he hears YHO strong every day, and XJ, BOB, KRY, and TH almost daily. LEK comes in every few days. November 29 brought OK at RST 229 through heavy QRN, and December 6 saw ZIA come through at 349 quality. GIR has also made it to Illinois this season. Brice had a QSO with XJ, calling the latter station after hearing it shut down at 6:47 PM on November 14. Solid contact continued for nearly an hour. Brice says XJ has also had QSOs with LEK and ZIA, and hears ARK, BOB, and OK. A new Beverage antenna, nearly a mile long, now also enhances XJ's reception toward the east. Other loggings passed along by Brice: JDH heard NR, RED, XJ and ZIA. And, BOB has heard XJ, YHO, and BA. Hopes for a BOB-BA QSO continue high. Brice also relays word that Carl Lundgren, TH, managed to copy SAQ's ID during the commemorative test on 17.2 kHz in late October. Congratulations, Carl. At the Top End, Brice was hearing STLMO, CSA, PX and ZL in late November, and in December also copied MIN, MPK, and VA. He reports that MPK was nearly on top of MIN. Brice got his MedFER, IE, back on the air on November 18, but later reports some possible parasitic difficulties to be resolved. -Bernie Pridgeon (YD, KQ4YD; kq4yd@juno.com) writes: "Things must be picking up a little, I have been hearing FB's on and off for the past week, mostly on 183 Khz and 163 Khz, I also heard JDH on the night of November 19, he had a good signal but copy was rough, as the QRM was very bad here that night. I can hear RED just about any time I turn the radio on, he says the same about me, I guess if we can't hear anybody else we've always got each other, hi hi. I have been wanting to put up a new antenna but here lately it seems like I have more ideas than initiative or time." "By the way, what's happened to WI? I have usually heard him by now but I noticed that he's not even listed in the beacon list anymore. Please let me know as I always looked forward to hearing him in the fall." Bernie's not alone in asking about WI. Walt returned this fall's beacon questionnaire with a note saying, "I've thrown in the towel--all beacons QRT," and indicated he has not renewed his LWCA membership either. The band won't be quite the same without him. -Hank Holbrook (Dunkirk, MD) got off to a good start on the MedFER season on November 3, pulling in CSA from 0608-0641 EST with weak to fair strength, readable with little to some difficulty. From 0644-0702, RGQ came in weakly, varying from undreadable to copied with difficulty. The ID was "RGQ RGQ RGQ W3." -David Jones (NR, AD4NR; Columbus, GA; d.jones160@genie.com) has been hearing RED before sundown, and ZIA, JDH and YD from time to time. David journeyed to Croatan National Forest, some 450 miles from home, to try to record the Mir INTMINS test on November 23. "The forest is more a prairie marsh than a forest. The Indians referred to it as pocosin, for swamp-on-a-hill. I had recorded INSPIRE there in the spring of 1992. At the waterfoul impoundment the nearest power line is three and one-fifth miles. I had seen the forest from an airplane at night; a huge black hole among thousands of scattered lights. The INTMINS map showed the midpoint of operation 23-1 roughly there." Fuel filter problems increased during the trip, making timely arrival a bit iffy, and access to the site was now from a different direction, but David arrived OK. Despite the distance from power lines, a modest amount of hum came through, indicating a sensitive setup. "The previous night's storm made mucho sferics although the storm was far out in the Atlantic by now. I wonder if the cosmonauts would look out and see the lightning show.... After sundown, the wind died and the sferics became tweaks." The tape did not indicate any reception of 1 kHz tone, as it turned out, but he adds, "searching for the MIR transmissions got me interested also in looking back at the March 1992 shuttle tapes. When Mike Cook e-mailed me to tell me a signal was on the old tape, I used the spectrogram to look. In the last twenty seconds of known shuttle transmission are four instances of this signal. The freqs are both 5620 and 5404 Hz at the same time, for 1.8 seconds. Another of the four instances was the same freqs. The others were 5547 and 5447 for 1.8secs, 5017 and 6050 for 2.44 secs." "I recorded the tape for the March 1992 INSPIRE first pass over the USA. I had practiced before many times and have base line tapes which have no such emission on them....We were expecting a descending step-tone like on the Mideke practice tape. The double tones may suggest alaises from a strong signal which occurred during the 1992 recording but they are unique to that tape. I will listen for the audible sqeal on the reel to reel copy. That always takes time to find since the tape has no precise index. Realize the format of the found tones doesn't match the practice tape. Of course the practice tape didn't draw high current and blow a fuse." The spectrogram and more of his notes should be on the BBS as you read this, or at least by spring. -Lyle Koehler (LEK, MIN, K0LR; Aitkin, MN; k0lr@emily.net) has been hearing LowFERs KRY, XJ, BA, YHO, ART, IMG, SAM, ARK, TH, RM and OK. He says, "Not a very long list this year. On MF the list is even shorter: ZL, D and STLMO." "On November 17th I had a pleasant surprise when I tuned across the LowFER band and heard XJ for the first time this season. It took a moment to realize that he was calling me. After a quick scramble to get the straight key out of the closet and plug it in, we had a pleasant QSO." "MIN is now operating on 189.600 kHz. I made a new main loading coil and installed it about mid-way up the 49-foot antenna mast. The small tapped inductor at the base of the antenna which is used for fine tuning didn't have enough inductance to reach the original MIN frequency of 184.77 kHz. Then the oscillator and divider circuit failed for some reason, so I ended up building a new circuit with the VE2IQ keyer and a simple synthesizer all on one PC board. Like LEK, MIN is operating in CCW mode, with BPSK available by request. Bill, WA8LXJ has reported hearing MIN in Ohio, but it's weaker than LEK." "MIN (MedFER) is back in continuous operation at about 1642.0 kHz. I shut it down last spring when KXBT started transmitting on 1640 kHz. Now that KXBT is on their assigned frequency of 1630, MIN's frequency is relatively clear again." "In addition to the spectral display and filtering freeware I told you about before, there is a shareware antenna modeling program available called NEC4WIN (MININEC for Windows). An evaluation copy can be downloaded from http://WWW.CAM.ORG/~mboukri/n4wpage.htm The evaluation copy is supposed to be fully functional except that you can't save your designs and retrieve them. I tried the program on a simple LowFER antenna model with four top radials and a skirt, and it appeared to give the same results as the AO antenna analysis software." "There may be some bugs that haven't been worked out, or maybe I wasn't entering things correctly. Inserting a loading coil in the LowFER antenna model didn't change the feed point impedance. Although NEC4WIN antenna models are limited to 15 'wires (It takes 13 wires to model a vertical antenna with 6 top radials and a skirt), the program can provide some useful data on the radiation resistance and capacitance of a proposed design without a lot of building and measuring. Something to play with when it's too cold to be doing real antenna experiments." "Here is a copy of a message I received from Kevin McWilliams, KW5Q, regarding the updated version of his 'SBFFT' freeware. The first version had some bugs, but this one seems to work like a champ. Filter bandwidths can be set down to a few Hertz. I tried it on a couple of very close-spaced LF non-directional beacons (GLS in Galveston, TX and IIB in Independence, IA). It was possible using a combination of narrow passband and notch filters to pick out one and remove the other." "The only flaw noticed in my limited testing so far is some 'hunting' of the AGC. Perhaps it gets confused by the slow CW identifiers on the non-directional beacons. At 1-Hz resolution, the AGC would cycle up and down over a period of several seconds. It's not a serious problem and can be eliminated by turning off the AGC function. This is a fun program and offers a really cheap way for someone with a fast PC and Sound Blaster card to experiment with DSP filtering." -Bob A. Hoffswell (BOB, AA9DH; Mahomet, IL; harvey@prairienet.org) is hearing both BA and YHO daily at about a consistant RST 569. "When XJ is on, he's a good 589 here, and also has heard BOB, as he reported on the 160m net a few weeks ago. (He has quite an antenna farm, however, and I suspect he can hear just about anything!) I'm trying to have a QSO with BA, listening daily at about 4:30 CST and have sent a note to XJ." "BOB has a new antenna: A 40' tubular, sectional government surplus mast, with a 10' diameter top-loading capacitance. I've also added a few thousand feet of radials and a ground rod in my pond, and plan to add more radials and a better RX antenna soon. I've been hearing both BA and YHO very well here lately and using my portable receiving setup with a 6' whip and regenerative preamp to a DX440. A 'new' Sierra voltmeter also works well and is really handy to measure signal-strength of BOB in the countryside.". "Signal strength measured locally is better than last season, but not as much antenna current as Lyle gets! Please note that BOB has moved in frequency to help BA copy BOB better through power-line carriers. The crystal in the TX has been padded to get the frequency down to 187.863kHz and it seems to be staying there pretty well." "I've been working with N9RLV on a MEDFER beacon. The prototype works fine and the final version should be on soon. I had it on the air for a few days near the end of november using the callsign JN at about 1675kHz." -Robert Laney (RL; RLLaney@aol.com) had RL off for about 10 days while visiting his daughter in Arizona. Before leaving, "I heard my first LowFER beacon for the season, TH in Colts Neck, NJ. Caught it just before sunrise on 2 straight weekends. It was pretty weak, but was there. The distance is about 200 miles." -Mike Staines (WA1PTC; Mike@nh.ultranet.com) has been recording and digitizing some of the Part 15 beacons he hears, including PX, RGQ, and WA. The first two may still be downloadable at ftp://www.nh.ultranet.com/pub/m/mike/px.wav and ftp://www.nh.ultranet.com/pub/m/mike/rgq.wav. All three are also available on the Longwave BBS in shorter form, and will soon be available on the Longwave Home Page's Part 15 section. The first two "were made with my IC-735, a 100' longwire and the older Timewave filter with the center freq of 500 Hz and the bandwidth set at 50 hz. The recording equipment was MacRecorder running on a Mac II-Cx." Mike is thinking of writing a program that would let users get a taste of beacon hunting. "I once did a project on one of my Amigas that simulated a CW receiver. The Amiga had great audio capability so it was easy to simulate the sounds of a ham band with computer generated QSOs, including static crashes, etc. Anyway, I was just thinking that it might be fun to do that kind of thing for the PC... Have a screen where you can tune a digital radio complete with background noise and birdies, but if you tune a frequency that has a beacon, then you get a sound sample of the beacon. Perhaps throw in there a random number generator to see if the band is even 'open' that night. A little pitch-bending would give the effect of tuning in the beacon." However, another project also occupies his attention...transmitting MedFER from his sailboat on Casco Bay near Portland, Maine. "Bought a 160 meter mobile whip and mounted it on the transom (rear end to you landlubbers). Anyway, the Medfer is a Ramsey AM transmetter kit that I crystal controlled. I'll report final frequency, et al, when it is installed." -Bill Cantrell (TEXAS; cantrell_bill@macmail1.fwrdc.rtsg.mot.com) experienced a powerful thunderstorm last month, accompanied by ice storms and strong winds. The beacon went off, seemingly the victim of a zapped final, and the ice "had the top-hat drooping a full 10 feet below the top of the tower. Looked like a closed umbrella. It sprang back in place once the ice melted. Of course we lost power to the entire neighborhood for about 12 hours too. FAA NDB Station FT was also off the air for a while... We have had rain for 6 straight weeks now." Fortunately, by the 12th, TEXAS was back. "It turned out that the only problem was a little spider that had made a web across the air- variable capacitor plates. No lightning damage after all. My next experiment is to get rid of the air-variable capacitor and go to swinging- link tuning." This will apparently be accomplished with Bill Bowers' adjustable link and a good wooden dowel to mount it on. "Another experiment that I think might boost efficiency would be to actually ground the tower itself and feed the (insulated) top-hat by placing the transmitter up at the top of the tower. Lotsa logistical problems to do that but who knows . . ." -Bill Bowers (OK; okbill@juno.com) has continued graphing comparisons of FT and TEXAS. He reported to Bill Cantrell that "there was about a 6db gain in TEXAS when you added the top-hat. This brought it above the night time noise and it was very readable around the clock." He also noticed the absence of TEXAS after the storms, and found his own Lowfer, OK, had gotten zapped too. Lightning took out the crystal, forcing a move up to 189.950. "Better start improving my church attendance," he notes, and sends wishes for Happy Holidays. -John R. (Rick) Wright (R, KA5YWH, Durant, OK; see text regarding e-mail) reported on December 7, "I went out to the quiet site two miles SW of my home in Durant, and right at noon I was getting a good signal from OK. He transmits about two seconds of key down, then the A1A 'OK' at a rate of something like five words per minute. The signal quality was good enough for communications.... I think I'm hearing some new PLCs near or on the TEXAS frequency, however." "The 'Wright Stuff' is at it again. I've been back into flying lately, photographing SE Oklahoma bogs (out in the boonies) as part of a botanical project that I became involved with many years ago. I keep forgetting to take the LF receiver aloft with me (and the cameras do keep me occupied--you should try photographing while flying the plane!)." (No thanks. If your columnist were flying a plane, there'd be too much praying going on, both in the air and on the ground, to think about cameras. -JHD) "The aircraft ignition system is shielded, but I don't know if the level is really quiet enough for LF. For one thing, aircraft can generate and bleed off static charges under certain circumstances, which might contribute some crackle and pop." "Computer 'services' is screwing around with my e-mail accounts, and I don't know which account will survive after Dec. 31st. {As of March 4, 1997, jwright@sosu.edu turns out to be the presumably permanent one.} -Cliff Buttschard (C, HDO, K7RR; Morro Bay, CA; cbuttsch@juno.com) has been having some strife with college administration over the site used by the Cuesta amateur radio club and the C/HDO beacon. "Just today I went up to the site and found all five of the beverage antennas cut down and not a trace of the wire remains.... almost all ground the radials have been either cut or uprooted.... The day before Thanksgiving the club had reconditioned all the antennas in preparation for the 160 contest, so there is no doubt of the intent of this effort..... On a brighter note, I temporarily put the HDO(nul) beacon back on the air as my spirts were so low I simply had to find a constructive project. Please use the BPSK beacon actively now, for however long it might last," he cautions. -John T. Collins (P, KN1H; John_T._Collins@vtetv.org ) turns out to be an engineer for Vermont ETV, a state public television network similar to the one for which your columnist works. He notes, "Probably all that high-power UHF work explains my interest in low-power LF play!" "I noticed that my beacon, P, was off due to insufficient sunshine during the last week. The battery is on charge and it should be up again. I haven't done much radio play lately as my wife lost her battle with cancer last month (age 40) and there has been much else to occupy my time. Hopefully my concentration will return someday, there are a lot of things I want to try!" -David E. Crawford (decrawf@nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu) sent a fine report on the CANAVDX 1996 DXpedition, held from 1900Z on 7 December to 1200Z on 8 December, 1996, at Canaveral National Seashore, north district, south of New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Principal participants included David (using a Drake R-8, 1000' beverage antenna @ 150 degrees azimuth on ground); Terry Krueger (NRD-535, 300' longwire antenna @ 330 degree azimuth on ground, Sony car radio for en-route logs; tocobagadx@earthlink.net); and William Merrill (ICOM IC-741, 200' longwire antenna @ 150 degrees azimuth on ground; william.merrill-1@ksc.nasa.gov). Conditions were described as "in short, dismal. The most convective cold front in the area in several months passed overnight. The preceding thundergusts produced sufficient QRN to preclude any serious, protracted LW/MW listening. Propagation into Latin America was depressed, and MW conditions favored domestic reception." Nonetheless, there were several quite good loggings. The AM band produced R Vision Cristiana (530 kHz) from South Caicos, plus various Cubans and Venezuelans. Some of the more notable Transatlantic loggings included: CROATIA-Hrvatski R Network 1, Zarad, on 1134 kHz UK-Virgin R, Moorside Edge, England, 1215 kHz LIBYA-Voice of the Great Homeland, Tripoli, 1251 kHz "Other fairly common Euro's noted 0400-0630 included UNID 747, Spain synchros-1125/1602, Albania-1215/1395, Norway-1314, Malta-1557." Loggings in the Top End frequency range: 1609.97 FLORIDA TIS Anastasia State Recreation Area, St. Augustine, 2019 usual M cart, fair level, tended to dominate the channel at Canaveral due to proximity. Co-ch Hamilton County's DTMF 9-8-9-8 beeping fading in and out. 1610 TENNESSEE TIS Ocoee Ranger District, Cherokee National Forest, 1056+ redneck W surfacing atop channel for final TIS log of the session. References to "Ocoee... Forest Service... we hope you'll stop by." 1620 VIRGINIA TIS Shenandoah National Park, W tape loop w/ references to Waynesboro, phone numbers, holidays, Pedmont, National Forest, "7:30 Saturday", mountain top and "479 campsites". Mixing w/ the M loop TIS from Shenandoah, so clearly there are two operating within the Park, with this one previously unreported. At least two other unID TIS's (M and W voices, each) were noted buried way down and never IDed. Clearly, 1620 is becoming a mess as well. 1620 VIRGINIA TIS Shenandoah National Park, M tape loop w/visitor info, same station as previously heard here in Florida. Very poor through QRN and co-ch QRM from the other Shenandoah station. 1635 UNID mystery station, presumably same as heard last year, 2024-2230*, mostly just carrier but occasional snatches of audio around 2200, better on southern beverage. 2230 either pulled plug or dropped power considerably, another much weaker carrier there afterward. Another carrier on 1631.1 also previously heard, this one on throughout the evening, have never heard any audio on it. 1643.5 SOUTH CAROLINA MedFER "ABC", Hilton Head, 2032 CW ID, very poor through QRN. Only MedFER audible. 1700 UNID NDB "CPA" 0720 A2 morse ID, co-ch CRJ Caraja, Brasil. Fair level. Previously reported by Mike Hardester last January, exact location unknown, but undoubtedly in Latin America somewhere. Shortwave brought in a number of interesting clandestine stations and the occasional pirate. The full text is available on the Longwave BBS as CANAV97.TXT. -Jack Sippel (Overland Park, KS; jack.sippel@nellcorpb.com) reports, "There have been a couple of recent posts on WUN (the Internet e-mail utility newsletter) concerning the Ground Wave Emergency Network system at around 170 kHz. There is a GWEN trasmitter at Maple Hill, Kansas which is fairly close to where I live. Out of curiosity, I visited the site a few months ago and shot a few dozen pictures. I have been trying to get a complete picture of GWEN for a few months now. The best info about GWEN that I have found is in Ken Stryker's beacon guide, but that is about 5 years old. I searched the Web and found a few references to the military equipment used and a lot of references to maintenance training for military electronics technicians. I also found a 1992/93 era report on GWEN radiation health effect from the National Research Council (ISBN 0-309-04777-3). Unfortunately, not much more." -Pierre Thomson (RI, KA2QPG; pthomson@bruderhof.com) has had RI on the air at 184.320 KHz since early November, but this is our first chance to include his description. "The antenna is a 42 foot steel tower with a 14-foot top hat and 3 multi-insulated steel guy wires. I am using slow CW (5.000 Hz keying) which is about 6 wpm. Carrier and keying frequencies are derived from a single temperature-controlled crystal oscillator, and it stays within 1 Hz of 184.320 at all times. CCW receivers might be able to lock onto it, though I don't send sync patterns." "At this point, RI is a beacon only. It's too far from my house to key directly, and I haven't figured out a remote method yet. Some day I hope to have 2-way capability and hold QSOs with some of the other LowFERs in the Northeast." -David Goncalves (N1XZB; 2 Overlook Circle, Milford, MA 01757) enjoyed the history/nostalgia segment of last month's column, and thought back to his own first radio. "It was one of those crystal sets with the coil you had to wind yourself. I was always amazed by how it ran without a power source." Having a local radio station less than a mile away made a big antenna unnecessary, too. David is particularly interested in information on the first voice broadcasts from his state, and is also looking for LF transmitting equipment made before 1935. He solved the problem of no LF sensitivity on his Sangean portable receiver by going back to the Telefunken Bajazzo Jr., "which can pick up everything, even though it means giving up a digital LCD readout." The aero beacons came booming back in, including one signing LI...quite possibly the one in Arkansas. David also had some questions, for which the answers would probably be most interesting: Why was 1750 meters given Part 15 status? Has anyone tried to decode GWEN signals? And, what did people do before the LWCA? Footnotes. If you have thoughts on these or any other topics that you'd care to share with us, don't wait til next New Year. Send 'em in now. Until next time, 73, and all the best in 1997! - - -