[Lowfer] Re: What receiver do you recommend?

Tue, 11 Nov 2003 23:03:41 -0600

Hi Steve,

I use 8' long 3/4th inch copper water pipe for my ground stakes. They are
plenty cheep enough to pound a few in and forget about them if a better
antenna location comes up later. With a copper plated steel stake, you can
always wrap a chain around it and to a fence post to pry it out of the
ground for another use. I think a good ground would help the signals on
receive. It certainly does for transmitting so most likely will work in
reverse for receiving. I wonder how a few thousand-foot beverage would work
on LF with the terminating resistor. I think the resistor value is 390-ohms.

Good luck with the studies. CW is easy to learn once you get the alphabet
down pat.

Mike>WE0H

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Steve Hughes
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 1:52 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [Lowfer] Re: What receiver do you recommend?

Thanks for the info! Along these lines, how much to I benefit from having a
really good ground with my long steel wire antenna and my little DX-398? I
asked for a grounding rod last weekend at the hardware store in Spooner, and
I was a little surprised to find that it was about 9' long! I'll certainly
drive that sucker into the ground, but do I want to save this for when I
have my beacon put together? Or will it make a significant enough
contribution to my reception that I should hook it up right away?

Thanks again! What a great group!

Steve

PS

Ham University is a GREAT program! The method of instruction is perfect. I
was going to write a computerized, learning theory based Morse course to
teach myself, but I see it's already been done. I have been making steady
progress, and am even hitting about 50% correct on the Technician class
questions from Ham U--without having read any prep books yet! If my Morse
gets good enough, I may just go right for the General license!

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Ed Phillips
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 11:11 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Lowfer] Re: What receiver do you recommend?

WE0H wrote:
>
> Hey Steve,
> The steel wire would have a high Rac but I think with enough of it out
> there that the signal would be high enough to overcome the losses. At
> some point the longer the antenna on LF, the higher the signal but
> higher noise too.

        Steel wire shouldn't be a problem at all.  in Watt's "VLF
Engineering" there's a description of a huge VLF (~20 kHz) German station
(Gigante?) built during WW2 for communication with subs.  All galvanized
steel and the quoted efficiency is very good.

Ed
_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________