[Lowfer] VLF reception

[Graham]

Good morning all,

I haven't made a concerted effort to copy to copy the Russian ALPHA 
stations but it is on my list of something to try. I use a EMU USB PRE 
sound card connected to an antenna and Spectrum Lab as my VLF receiver 
and it works quite well. I do at night copy quite well the Russian Naval 
transmissions on 18.1 and 21.1 plus their VLF time transmissions on 
25.0, 25.1 25.5, 23.0, and 20.5 (a quick Google search for Russian VLF 
time signal will provide more information).

I suspect that the long integration time of my VLF does not allow the 
ALPHA transmissions to show up very well. You can see my grabber here 
(new screen grab every 5 minutes).

TACAMO is interesting too. Typically I see activity on 17.8 most 
frequently, sometimes 27.2, and 22.7.

And, TACAMO is active as I type this on 17.8.

cheers, Graham


On 2014-11-22 07:40, Douglas D. Williams wrote:
> Good job, Jay. What you are seeing is a plethora of military MSK stations,
> both stateside and overseas. The strongest ones are in the USA. NAA, 24
> kHz, is always the strongest at my QTH. If you mess with the settings in
> Spectrum Lab, you can tell it the lowest and highest frequencies you want
> to view, and thus magnify a certain chunk of spectrum that you are
> interested in.
>
> Typically, there isn't a lot of excitement down there, as most of those
> stations are on 24/7. Occasionally you will see a TACAMO (take charge and
> move out....don't you love acronyms...) station, often around 18 kHz.
> These, IIRC, are flying transmitters that trail a long wire antenna.
>
> For me, hearing the Russian Alphas is a big deal. Those are marked RSDN on
> your Spectrum Lab display. I used to get very good copy on the old OMEGA
> transmitters, but the Alphas are weak here at my QTH.
>
> There is a group of experimenters, mostly in Europe, who transmit on the
> "Dreamer's Band" (below 9 kHz). I believe they mostly use QRSS600 (or
> slower)!! You can imagine the frequency stability and accuracy that is
> necessary to achieve DX on that band. I would assume GPS discipline is a
> must, both for the transmitter and the receiver. I think there is a Yahoo
> group, if you're interested.
>
> As for USA VLF experimenters, our own Dex has set a record for overseas
> Dreamer's Band reception, as you can read about on the LWCA home page.
>
> Finally, here is a link to a web site that specializes in sub 22 kHz topics
> and experiments:
>
> http://www.vlf.it/
>
>
> Well, I got a little long winded there, but hopefully said something that
> was at least mildly interesting. ;-)
>
> 73, Doug KB4OER
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 11:58 PM, Garry Hess <k3siw at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>> Jay, I envy the "quiet" nature of your screencapture. Here I have a
>> substantial picket fence of 60 Hz harmonics leaked out by ComEd 24/7. A
>> fine source for VLF stations and frequencies is on Jay/s (W1VD) site at
>> http://www.w1vd.com/vlf.html. Another source of information is at
>> http://www.classaxe.com/dx/ndb/rna/signal_list. Just enter low
>> frequencies like 10 to 100 kHz, check the "other" type box, then "go". It's
>> also helpful to do the same for the Europe and Worldwide cases.
>> --
>> 73, Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL
>>
>> ____________