[ARC5] NAA Cutler, ME

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

On 26 Nov 2013 at 20:25, w8au at sssnet.com wrote:

> Ken:  Are you thinking of NSS Annapolis?  I think the Cutler, ME 
> station was NAA.
> Been a long time.... I have to dig into the archives...
> 
> Perry

Yes. You are correct, Perry. I realized that I had given the wrong 
call as soon as I hit "Send". 

Anyway, the one at North West Cape in Australlia was NWC, now that I 
remember. If I remember right NLK was at Jim Creek. Don't remember 
were NPG and NPM were. One or the other was at the Canal Zone, I 
think. Can't remember the call of the one at Lualualei in Hawaii 
either. That one used an Alexanderson Alternator for many years, at 
least up into the 1970s as I recall. The backwave from the 
Alexanderson's was pretty fierce when you were nearby....like 100 
miles away. Supposedly, the backwave was only about 10db less than 
the main signal. I remember hearing the backwave, but at my location 
in Missoula, it was not bad enough to make copying the CW difficult.

And I just looked up that German VLF station: it was Goliath. The 
Reds destroyed it and moved the transmitter to the USSR after WWII.

When it was operating in Germany during WWII, its output was 1.8 MW, 
same as NAA. During WWII, it was the most powerful transmitter in the 
world.

It is particularly interesting that a 1/4 wave antenna at those VLF 
frequencies is about 2.5 KM tall. That is about 1.5 miles. Some 
antenna!

Ken W7EKB