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From Kevin Carey's column in the new issue of The LOWDOWN...a Motorola Airboy LF receiver for use on aircraft. It was a battery powered superhet design that tuned 200-400 kHz, employing 1R5, 1T4, 1S5, and 3S4 tubes (one each).
 | | The LOWDOWN This Month
In the September 2010 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...
- "The LF Notebook" Conducted by John Davis. News of LF radio happenings for, from, by, and about LWCA members.
- "Natural Radio" Conducted by Mark Karney.
- "News From the Old World" Alan Gale keeps us informed of LF experimentation on the "other side of the pond."
- "LF Receiver Performance" (Part 13: SAIT Model MR1411) by John Reed.
- "Signalling to Submarines at Extremely Low Frequencies" Part 2, by Dr. Brian Austin.
Interested in subscribing? Click here for address, rates, and remittance information (including PayPal).
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| | A Good Time for SID Monitors
One consequence of increased solar activity is that the Sun will be throwing the occasional X-ray tantrum more frequently, and this is good news for Natural Radio enthusiasts who happen to operate SID (Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance) monitors tuned to stations in the VLF spectrum. One such SID happened this past weekend (the 14th), and SpaceWeather.com on 15 August carried a report with a chart recording of the event.
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| | US LORAN-C Transmissions Are Now Ended
The other shoe has dropped. It appears the remaining US Coast Guard LORAN-C stations ceased operation by 1900 UTC on 3 August, 2010, about two months ahead of the initially announced schedule. You can read a more detailed report from John Andrews in the LW Message Board.
The first phase of the shutdown began on February 8, with the closure of all transmissions intended for operation of U.S.-only chains. At that time, US-based transmitters which were also part of Canadian and Russian-American chains under international treaty were set to remain operational until 1 October.
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| | LWCA Community Forums Operational
As of May 1, we have opened a new forum area to supplement the Longwave Message Board. Our new community forums offer all the modern features and conveniences, and we invite you to explore them via the link above.
The software has been in place and functional for over two years, but interest has waxed and waned, so we didn't announce it until now. This seemed a good time to bring something new online, since message activity is past the peak usage of the winter months and, thus, any necessary tweaking of the forums shouldn't cause major inconveniences. Enjoy.
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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
•Whistler Receiver Online Hear a NASA Project INSPIRE receiver in near-real-time from Huntsville, Alabama. Lots of sferics, including tweaks and occasional whistlers, should be audible, particularly in the hours just before dawn at the receiving site. Listen to the receiver through the SpaceWeather INSPIRE page and get more background on whistlers and related phenomena from this NASA news headline.
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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.
Slow CW for Linux. Claudio Girardi (IN3OTD) has released the next version of his Slow CW software for users of the Linux operating system, alpha 0.3.1. 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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