[ARC5] 500 KHZ Emergency Frequency

[Richard Knoppow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sandy" <ebjr37 at charter.net>
To: <kgordon2006 at frontier.com>; "Roy Morgan" 
<k1lky at earthlink.net>
Cc: <Arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 10:56 AM
Subject: Re: [ARC5] 500 KHZ Emergency Frequency


> Some years ago I was in England doing a month long 
> "school" trip on some of
> Marconi's newer gear.  I did a lot of listening in the 
> tiny "inn" room I was
> in with an old Grundig "Satellit" receiver with an add-on 
> BFO.  I couod hear
> scads of the European stations on 500 and very frequently 
> WCC, WSL in late
> evening 2300-0200GMT.   All those power houses are QRT 
> now!
>
>>From the New Orleans area back home, It was easy to hear 
>>the west coast MF
> stuff very late at night, wee hours of morning local time 
> (cst)  Mostly KLB,
> KFS.
>
> I really miss those days when 600 meters was very active. 
> Also the huge
> amount of HF activity as well that is gone now.....end  of 
> a golden era of
> radio communication on Morse.  It will probably never 
> return to that "glory
> era" again for any reason.
>
> 73,
>
> Sandy W5TVW

     I had a simple regenerative receiver and not much of an 
antenna for 500khz. Mostly heard the local stations but 
sometimes heard KPH and KFS in San Francisco and some 
others.
     Some idea of coverage of 500 khz can be had from the 
coverage of broadcast stations operating at the low end of 
the MW broadcast band.  Daytime ground wave coverage with a 
radius of perhaps 100 miles for medium power stations is 
common.  High power stations do better.  I can hear KCBS in 
San Francisco (740khz) from the North end of the foothills 
of the L.A. area all the way up the 5 freeway to Sacremento 
during the daytime. KCBS has a directional pattern which I 
think is aimed south and operates daytime as well as night, 
so the ERP is probably over 100kw.  Most of the coastal 
telegraph stations ran much lower power and did not have 
efficient antennas but typical coverage must have been on 
the order of a few hundred miles daytime.  Skywave coverage 
at night could have been thousands of miles as it is for 
broadcast stations.  Some of the coatal stations ran higher 
power and had better antennas, certainly WCC, WSL, KFS, KPH 
were among them but I think from the 1930s on HF was 
depended on for long distance coverage.
    KSE, the Radiomarine station here used A2 on 500 for 
calling. I could hear the audio oscillator warm up when they 
began to send CQ for traffic lists. It was the only station 
on 500 khz that I heard doing this.  A2 was OK for distress 
work and I think some autoalarms were set up for it. KSE had 
a big flat top antenna.



--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk at ix.netcom.com