[ARC5] NSS Cutler, ME

[Fuqua, Bill L]

  This is interesting, when I was a kid I could hear loads of beacons and other stuff on an old Stewart and Warner radio which I had
a long wire antenna on. This radio was my father's (he was a mechanic) and this radio should have had a loop antenna on it but only
had a spool of wire attached. Suspect the back cover got lost broken or something happened to it and someone just added the wire 
antenna. 
   Anyway, now I am sure that the input to the mixer was basically untuned. Somehow, I could hear NSS on it. Now this was before I
learned CW, maybe 8 years old or so. I would listen to the radio for hours and the signal is still stuck in my head like a song.
Later, I learned Morse code and knew what it was. 
   By the way, this was in Nashville Tennessee. It just repeated over and over.
73
Bill wa4lav

> using four insulated standoffs at each point at intervals along the
> feedline.

Yes. I have seen that photo. I think it is still on the web
somewhere. There is also a photo of the HUGE variometer in the
antenna tuning house at the bottom of the feed-line. The antenna was
mounted on 12 ea 600 foot towers.

The Germans had a similar setup many years ago. The antenna system
was similar to the one at NSS. It completely crossed over a large
river in Germany. As I remember it, they named it Goliath or
Collossus or something similar. It was destroyed during WWII, as I
remember it.

> The transmitter fed one of two identical antennas that had a
> huge ground counterpoise "screen" leading into the ocean. If one
> antenna iced up they fed raw AC (I guess) to the other antenna to
> de-ice it and then switched antennas. If I recall, the signal
> transmitted was ICW at about 5 wpm. Any higher speed would cause the
> bandwidth of the signal to exceed the bandwidth of the antenna system!

That may have been early on, but by the time I was using it for code
practice, it, and all the others, was transmitting 5-letter code
groups at a pretty steady 30 WPM.

I have forgotten how they got around the antenna-bandwidth problem
but they did. I read an article some time ago which outlined their
method. As I remember it, it was pretty ingenious. In fact, sometime
after I was no longer using those VLF stations for code practice,
they switched to a narrow-shift FSK, which actually required more
bandwidth than 30 wpm CW.

In fact, there are still one or two that are on the air sending that
stuff.

I worked with a fellow in Missoula, Montana for a couple of years in
the 1970s who bought and set up multiple VLF receivers, first mostly
RAKs, then RBLs, and others, with their audio outputs connected to
chart recorders to record the signal levels of many of the Navy VLF
stations.

He was investigating a VLF phenomenon called SES, or Sudden
Enhancement of Signal. When the chart recorders would show a sudden
rise in signal level, followed by an exponential fall off, he would
fire up his solar-prominence telescope and take photos of the sun-
spots and flares to correlate all that info.

He was a real nut. He left me 5 tons (and I am not kidding) of mostly
VLF radio receiving gear when he passed. Including over 150 ARC-5
receivers.

I remember specifically being tuned to NSS in Cutler, NPG, NPM, one
in the Canal Zone, and another at Northwest Cape, Australia. There
were several more I have forgotten.

All were copyable in Missoula using end-fed wires in two large pine
trees 24/7/365

Of course the one in Jim Creek, WA came in like gangbusters 24/7/365.

All you really needed for that one was a tuned circuit, a crystal
diode and some headphones. It was tremendously loud there.

Ken W7EKB
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