[Lowfer] Like solving mysteries?

[DTX]

I have one involving 2 and 3 signals around 173.076kHz in southern
california doing things that don't make sense to me.  Using Argo at 30s
dots, I see square waves lasting minutes....I see some swoopers that make a
sudden change and then slide back over 10's of minutes sometimes.  With an
RC time constant look.  They fade at different times....for awhile after
midnight they were all gone for several hours and came back around 6AM,
again at somewhat different times.  Frequency steps are small, sometimes a
few 10ths of Hz, sometimes a full Hz or more.  But whatever the step, it
goes back to the freq it was, i.e. never a 1hz down and then minutes later a
.7 or 1.2Hz up.

If you have a fast internet connection, you can see a sequence of Argo
captures.  http://home.socal.rr.com/gwood/LowFer  The Rx is set to
173.000kHz CW offset 700 with REV so that + freq in Argo is also + freq from
source.

If you have a slower connection, don't get the 008 thru 012 or 015 thru 019
images.  The first set is full of noise and the second set is all blank
screens.  Most of the other images are approx 60kb.

Were the times not so very long on many of the square waves, I might think a
local was doing some DFCW testing.  If there were no square waves I might
think it is receiver overload products.  Heck, I could even believe my own
computers if I just started looking around down here a day or two ago.  But
these appeared rather suddenly and I have been poking around 30 to 500kHz
for a year or more with a long wire just listening for things. (Because I
have more time than money ;-)  Mostly NDBs around the state since apparently
all the current LoFer action is east of Colorado.

My receiver is an Icom 718 and I could believe it was jerking around.
Except that a few weeks ago I ran a series of Argos from a cold start for 10
hrs against WWV and saw nothing like this.  And although I don't think exact
frequencies are so relevant here, between my sound card clock and the Icom,
I have never been more than .2Hz off WWV at 60kHz.

And lastly, these are quite strong here.  So either very local or a lot of
power involved.  When I first heard "it" there was fading from propagation,
or so I thought.  What it really was are beat notes of 2 or 3 signals .2 to
1Hz apart.  It was when I heard the abrupt change from a 3 second "fading"
pattern to a less than 1 second that I fired up Argo to see WHAT rather than
hear WHAT ;-)

Gary WA6DTX