[Lowfer] Monitoring success in SE TN - WEB capture posted

[Garry Hess]

Andy, your WEB capture looks good on page 2, but is mislabeled as "WMS". 
  Hope you had good luck with "EAR" overnight. It's coming in here as 
usual in the daylight, despite a large area of lightning activity not 
far away in Missouri. Figured that would make Lowfer beacon copy here 
impossible over night but nonetheless found WEB in there weakly between 
0715 and 1030Z.

I can tune down to just a few kHz with the SDR-IQ but have the 30 kHz 
limit you mention when using the IC-706. To get around that I built a 
mixer that uses a GPS-referenced 10 MHz for the LO. That way I can tune 
in say NAA on 24 kHz by setting the dial to 10.024.000, etc.


To identify VLF stations I generally rely on the frequency lists at 
http://www.vlf.it/trond2/list.html. Unfortunately these stations don't 
ID in CW like NDBs and Lowfers. Instead, nearly all of them transmit 
encrypted MSK digital signals, most at 200 baud, but I've seen a couple 
at 400 baud. Thus, they stand out as elevated noise bands when viewed on 
spectrum waterfall displays. Such displays generally have a means to 
indicate the received frequency associated with cursor position so I 
just center that on the signal in question, truncate the answer to XX.XX 
kHz, and scroll through the frequency list for identification.

73, Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL