[Boatanchors] Re: [AWA] SAQ Transmissions on 17.2KHz

[Al Klase]

Hi Chris, et al,

I don't want to discourage you, but SAQ has been pretty 
elusive in North America.  Your wire antenna might be OK if 
you're in a really quiet place.  For most of us, some kind 
of loop is our only hope.  There's coverage of my last 
successful effort in 1998, including an audio recording and 
spectrogram, on John Dilks' website at:
http://www.eht.com/oldradio/awa/events/grimeton/grimeton.htm

I'd suggest that anyone intending to listen for SAQ should 
make a band scan now, see what common stations they can 
hear, and tweak their station for better performance.

Here's an example.  The station is essentially as described 
in the link above.  I can hear atmospheric noise on 17.2 
rather than just AC buzz.  Stated signal to noise ratios are 
how far the signal stands above the adjacent noise as 
indicate by Richard Horne's Spectrogram program. See: 
http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/gram.html

Flemington, NJ 17:30 EDT, 30 June 2005:

100KHz	Loran-C	Pulse Modulation	S/N = 15dB
60Khz	WWVB	1Hz Pulse Amplitude Mod. S/N = 20dB
24KHz	NAA	MSK (FSK)(weak right now) S/N = 20dB
18.3	Prob. HWU (France) MSK		S/N = 6-8dB

Other easily heard stations all MSK/FSK

37.5KHz	NRK, Iceland
40.75	NAU, Puerto Rico
73.60	CFH, Halifax, NS

Good luck to all.  Get down to the coast is you can, I'm 50 
miles inland.

73,
Al

Al Klase - N3FRQ
Flemington, NJ
http://www.skywaves.ar88.net/


Christian R. Fandt wrote:
> Al and everybody,
> 
> I just recently got my RBL-3 *finally* debugged, cleaned-up, and running 
> quietly (intermittent shorted bypass cap, and I mean *intermittent*, dang 
> it! :-)
> 
> Anyway, although I have so far to now, a long wire antenna running 
> East-West about 130 feet horizontal, I would like to try the rig out by 
> hunting SAQ........
> 

> Also, would I expect very sloooow CW like some of the government VLF sigs 
> from the past, or would it sound like a rather normal fist?