[Lowfer] Another Newbie

[Lyle Koehler]

Vern, Winnipeg is actually "only" about 300 miles from me, but that would be
at the extreme edge of the ground-wave coverage for a LowFER CW beacon. You
might have a chance of copying LEK on a very quiet day in a very quiet
location. RM and BRO from Duluth are slightly farther away, but there's a
chance of hearing them also. With an attic antenna? Not likely, unless you
have a *really* quiet loacation. At present, LEK is transmitting 12 WPM CW
at 182.150 kHz, and BRO is identifying at 6 WPM on 182.200 kHz. I don't hear
anything on 189.800 at the moment -- RM must be off the air today. You would
have a much better chance of copying a QRSS LowFER beacon, and all it takes
is a computer with a sound card and the free Argo software. I can put LEK in
QRSS mode at any time by request.

As for good test signals below 200 kHz, I'm not sure what is available
during the QRN season. Here in central Minnesota, I can't hear any RTTY in
the 136 kHz range at the moment. Maybe they aren't using that frequency any
more. Marker "J" from Regina, SK is audible here between static crashes
right now (1500 CDT) on 204.4 (J's carrier is on 204.0, but so are a lot of
other signals!). That isn't quite in the frequency range you want, but it's
within easy ground-wave distance from Winnipeg. Bill Bowers used sound-card
based spectrogram software to evaluate LF receiving antennas by looking at
the S/N ratio from a strong NDB (in his case, GLS on 206 kHz). That seems
like a very good technique for optimizing an LF receiving setup.

Modeling software can be used to predict the relative effectiveness of LF
transmitting antennas. The techniques and software for doing this are
described on my web page at http://www.computerpro.com/~lyle/
There's even a sample file for an antenna using the guy wires as a top hat.

Lyle, K0LR