[ARC5] NSS Cutler, ME

[Geoff]

NSS was in the DC area as the USN HQ station for traffic.

Carl
KM1H


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fuqua, Bill L" <wlfuqu00 at uky.edu>
To: "Ken Gordon" <kgordon2006 at frontier.com>; "ARC-5 Mail List" 
<arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 8:22 PM
Subject: Re: [ARC5] NSS Cutler, ME


>  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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