Receiving LORAN-C; was: Re: [Spooks] LORAN-A

[Ben Mesander]

>Ben, very glad to hear that LORAN-C isn't going to go away!  At
>one time there were plans to drop it in favour of GPS.

They changed those plans; LORAN-C makes a nice backup, and perhaps soon another way to transmit GPS correction information (like DGPS).

It is very difficult to jam LORAN-C.

You can receive LORAN-C several ways. First of all, a hardware LORAN receiver. But how many of us have that? 

If you tune in AM mode to 100kHz you have a couple other options:

MultiMode OSX for Macintosh computers has a LORAN-C mode that will let you ID LORAN chains with your sound card.

You can use an oscilloscope hooked to your radio's speaker or headphone jack and set the sweep frequency to the rate of the LORAN GRI (Group Repitition Interval) of the chain you want to try to receive and note the stationary pulses. Pulses that "walk through" the display are at different GRI's.

Regards,
Ben