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The LOWDOWN This Month
In the february 2012 issue of the club publication:
- "DX Downstairs" Kevin Carey presents members' LF and VLF loggings.
- "On The Air" Experimenters operating on the 160-190kHz and 136kHz bands... and...
- "The Top End" MedFER and HiFER beacon lists... and...
- "Operator Contact List" How to reach the ops ... and...
- "The LF Notebook" Conducted by John Davis. LF radio happenings for, from, by, and about LWCA members.
- "News From the Old World" Alan Gale keeps us informed of LF experimentation on the "other side of the pond."
- "Natural Radio" Conducted by Mark Karney.
- 2012 NASWA SWL Fest Announcement.
Interested in subscribing? Click here for address, rates, and remittance information (including PayPal).
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| | Special Event Station Honors Heising, Fessenden
WF9HIX Granted STA Until March 1
A special voice and music transmission was heard far from its Forest, VA, originating point on Christmas Eve, and the station will continue to make commemorative broadcasts for a while longer, generally at 0200 UTC (9 PM EST). Brian Justin WA1ZMS has been granted Special Temporary Authorization WF9XIH by the FCC to allow operation of an antique MOPA transmitter with Heising-type amplitude modulation on 472.5 kHz. Brian also participates in the ARRL group experimental license for 600 meters as WD2XSH/31, using a 1922 vintage design MOPA employing a UV-201 in the master oscillator and a UV-202 for a power amplifier. When amplitude modulated by the Heising method, power is somewhat lower, so a linear Hafler audio amplifier is used to bring radiated power up to the authorized 20 W ERP for these special transmissions. The station coordinates use of the frequency with commercial coastal station WNE. Most future operation will consist of a loop containing voice ID and stepped tone sequences.
An MP3 capture is available online from Dexter McIntyre's Web site (489 KB). Dex's site also hosts a photographic tour of the station with closeups of the rig. Further information also appeared in the "LF Notebook" column of the January LOWDOWN.
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| | Happy 110th Anniversary
A hundred and ten years of trans-Atlantic radio!
 It was December 12, 1901, when Guglielmo Marconi and his helpers reported copying the letter "S" being transmitted in Morse code from the wireless station at Poldhu, Cornwall, at a temporary receiving site on Signal Hill at St John's, Newfoundland. Although there has been some question from that day until now as to whether Marconi really heard what he thought he did, the event provided sufficient motivation for him to proceed with building his first North American station at Table Head, Newfoundland. It took years before wireless telegraphy worked well enough to span the Atlantic reliably, but there always has to be a first step. Read more about Marconi's early stations at Nova Scotia's Electric Scrapbook Web site.
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| | Related Longwave Sites
•William Hepburn's DX Information Centre features many kinds of DX resources, including much on services found at LF and VLF; for example, regularly updated lists of NAVTEX and TWEB (Transcribed Weather) stations, LF/VLF time signals, and longwave broadcasters. Visit the site at its new location:
DX Information Centre. Don't overlook the pages for higher frequencies, and the propagation forecasts as well.
•Radio Waves Below 22 kHz Renato Romero's eclectic collection of topics pertaining to both manmade and natural radio signals from near DC to the upper end of audibility. Includes the VLF Open Lab, and articles by many contributors...some fairly orthodox, and some not. Visit: www.vlf.it
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| | QRSS and WOLF Software
Rik Strobbe's QRSS software (for transmitting extremely slow CW) is usually available from our file library, but while it is temporarily out of service, you can obtain QRSS and Rik's other useful software at the ON7YD download page.
Continuing Development of Argo. Alberto di Bene regularly posts the latest version of Argo, a receiving tool for displaying slow CW, that performs FFT spectral analysis and displays it in ways optimized for QRSS. Many of the transoceanic LF amateur records were set using Argo at the receiving end. Argo has somewhat similar performance to Spectran, but interacts better with the user's soundcard and is customized for QRSS modes.
WOLF. Stewart Nelson devised this unique mode, a variant of BPSK. See his announcement of the MS-DOS version for more details. Now, a GUI-based version by Wolf Buscher continues to increase the mode's popularity. Find the new software at the DL4YHF site.
Slow CW for Linux. Claudio Girardi (IN3OTD) has released Slow CW software for users of the Linux operating system, currently v 0.42. The program (called glfer) contains both transmit and receive capability, the latter including an FFT-based spectrum analyzer somewhat similar to those found in popular Windows Slow CW programs.
As with much open-source software in the X-world, you have to compile the C source code yourself. Users will also need additional code libraries. Links to those, plus downloadable source code, can be found at Claudio's glfer page.
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