[Lowfer] receive woes

[Douglas Williams]

Well, I believe I remarked a week or so ago that I haven't had much luck
receiving Lowfer signals so far this season and that the problem might be
on my end. Today, I finally found the time to do some investigating, and
the problem is indeed real, and right here.

As I was tuning around VLF this afternoon, I noticed that the S-Meter
readings were significantly lower (S3 ish) than I was getting at 180 kHz
(S9). This is with a 250 Hz CW filter. Now, there are no storms in the area
today, so I thought S9 was a bit high for QRN on a calm December afternoon.
Having a listen, I thought I could hear music. Using a much wider filter,
and switching over to SSB, and then AM, I was indeed hearing
music.....Christmas country music.....in the middle of the day on 180
kHz.....at S9. Probably one of my local AM broadcast stations.

I started taking things out of the receive chain in an effort to pin down
where the weak link is. First I eliminated the LF Converter, then the
receiver multicoupler, then the 500 kHz low pass filter, and finally I just
plugged the active e-probe DC coupler directly into the R75. No change.
Still the music.

So the issue is my active whip antenna or the buried coax between my house
and the antenna.

Doug KB4OER