[Lowfer] Sunday 18 Dec Report

[us66soft at aol.com]

Very little to report from my late afternoon through early morning 
sessions today.  It was around sunset before I managed to get to the 
field, and all HiFERs to my east were already gone except for MP.  Nice 
steady signal from Mitch, but there was no SIW or USC or even NC to be 
seen!  From the west, however, I was able to hear AJO and FRC 
reasonably well despite wide swings of signal level.

By the time I tried 185.3 we were apparently in the gray line 
diminution of signals at the distance of SIW and WMS.  Both were 
present, but sufficiently broken up that I would not have been able to 
testify what letters were which.  At 137, there was only MP.

For the first hour after sunset, LWBC signals weren't anything to write 
home about, but then they picked up.  Iceland's carrier was so strong, 
I couldn't discern EAR.no matter what I tried.  Couldn't get anything 
listenable out of Europe 1, but I heard somebody on 177 for the first 
time, and both Allouis and Tangier were quite loud, albeit with static.

Farther down the dial, HBG was surprisingly greater than S7 signal 
strength, and DCF77 was topping out a few dB over S9.  JJY was not yet 
audible, however, at 7 PM CDT (0100 UTC) when I returned to town for 
supper.

A little over two hours later, after checking the weather to make sure 
our predicted showers were nowhere in sight, I returned to the field.  
MP was blasting away quite audibly, throwing dogbones all over the 
place, and NA was showing up in DFCW most of the evening, too.  I 
napped for a while as those captures were going on.  LWBC remained 
strong all evening, even after 1 AM, by which time they're usually 
mostly gone.  The Swiss and German time signals were still excellent, 
and JJY was prominent on 40 kHz.  I still had plenty of computer 
battery power left and the outside temperature was still in the upper 
40s, so I thought I'd try some extended captures of SIW and WMS at 1750 
m.  Both were doing quite nicely, so I dozed off again.

About 2;30, I was annoyed to be awakened by what seemed to be a 
mechanical rumbling.  I opened one eye and glanced to the left, 
expecting to see another freight train heading south on the track a 
quarter of a mile away.  Nobody there.  OK, it must be a particularly 
big truck on the highway a quarter mile to the east.  I opened the 
other eye to look in that direction.  Nobody there.

By that point, the rumble was gone and I was trying to think what else 
it might have been.  Maybe a pickup truck with a bad muffler had joined 
me in the field?  If someone managed to do that without waking me with 
his headlights, though, it would not be a sign of good intentions.  
That thought got _both_ eyes open in a hurry.  Nobody to be seen, 
though.  Perhaps an aural hallucination at the edge of sleep?  Not 
likely, as those tend to be followed either by REM state paralysis (as 
in lab-induced "alien abduction" or "spiritual encounter" scenarios), 
or else by sudden awakening that disrupts the brainwave pattern which 
caused the hallucination in the first place.  Up to now, at least, I've 
never known one to persist through a gradual awakening.

While pondering possible alternatives, I caught a flicker of light in a 
group of clouds illuminated beneath by the lights of a town 20-some 
miles away.  Lightning! --but 20 miles is too far to hear thunder.  Had 
a different small storm cell managed to sneak up closer than that to 
me?  Yes, it had!  Right about then, there was another flash of 
lightning from a cloud not quite 10 miles distant.  Instant 
decisiveness set in:  "Not really safe to disconnect from antenna now.  
Not safe to remain in car with antenna connected, either.  
Conclusion--must go ahead and disconnect anyway, preferably before that 
cloud gets a chance to recharge and/or approach any closer."  Mustering 
a sprightliness uncharacteristic of an old retired geezer, I slipped 
the shorting strap in place at the base of the antenna, then gingerly 
disconnected the buffer, the coax, and battery pack, and retreated 
rapidly to the car, all in record time.

Up to the arrival of the lightning, I had been hoping tonight's good 
VLF propagation would be a harbinger of what to expect Friday night 
when I try for SAQ around that same time.  With temperatures in the 20s 
F, there shouldn't be any thunderstorms Friday night...but there might 
be snow.

John