[Lowfer] Signals over night in NE IL

[Garry Hess]

Storms off the coast of NE made for a noisy night. At 0500Z EMP was 
coming through decently on 185.582 kHz and WMS and the upper WM were 
seen around the watering hole. But moving to 187.2 kHz produced nothing 
from PBO through 0700Z. At that time EMP had weakened to just barely 
detectable. NDB JC was very strong from NL on 350 kHz but other NL 
stations were weak or not even detectable through 0800Z. Interestingly, 
a second LSB harmonic from UCY, 380 kHz in Cuba was pretty good at that 
time. Decided to try to decode TAG anyway and after 29 minutes succeeded:

2011-02-19 08:51:03 >WOLF10  -r 11099.579 -f 400 -t 1.0 -w 0.0000 -ut
08:51:27 f:-0.001 a: 0.2 dp: 73.8 ci: 5 cj:209 0/JH87A69Z/*VDO ?
...
09:16:39 f: 0.010 pm:10.80 jm:206 q: -2.8 -8.7 AMPZGDMHXDOBMM1 ?
09:18:15 f: 0.010 pm:11.80 jm:206 q: -2.6 -5.6 TAG RAYMOND ME  -
09:19:51 f: 0.010 pm:13.96 jm:206 q: -2.1 -5.4 TAG RAYMOND ME  -

MP was fine as usual on 137.38 kHz but the VE7TIL grabber showed no 
other activity so left the frequency and ended the night listening for 
Navtex on 518 kHz. No failures like seen some days ago bothered 
reception but decodes were sparse anyway, just one message from San 
Francisco, a few from Puerto Rico, and some from the nearer big US stations.

As this is written I see that the Alpha VLF signals have returned. They 
showed up on the KL7UK grabber at 0800Z.

73, Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL