[Lowfer] 74.5kHz XRS4 copy

[craig wasson]

I got my first copy on 74.5 last night.  Using an SDR-IQ and a noisy
antenna in a noisy urban neighborhood in Martinsburg, WV.  Antenna is the
guy wire from an old 40' tv mast and not much of any ground.

Got a solid copy on XRS4 from 8:20pm to 11:30pm EDT - then fair reception
with noise obscuring at times until 1:00am.

I'll try my active antenna next week although I have not been using it up
to now since it seemed to pick up more noise even though it's farther away
from the noise sources.

As an aside - one big noise source I have is my solar panel's grid tie
inverter - but that quiets down when the sun goes down.  Also my TED-5000
power monitoring system transmits a nice wide signal on 125khz a few times
per second - but it does not seem to affect either 74.5 or 138khz.

This receiving setup isn't all bad - Using QRSS I see DCF39 and HGA22 solid
from local sunset to European sunrise, and on the LW broadcast channels I
see 1 to 3 or more carriers on every channel - again from my sunset to
sunrise at the other end.  Based on the apparent far end sunrise I'm
getting many Mongolian stations plus most of the ones in Russia, Africa and
Europe.   They may be running a million watts, but with the carriers
showing up at 60db above the noise I could hear someone running 1 watt (if
they used the same antenna!)


Craig - N6IO