[Lf] Re: LF Transmissions

[Elton A Sanders]

Hello All,

The situation was quite good here until about 0330 Zulu Monday 17
January, when things rapidly started going South !

a) Andre' and Joe K4OVK were at the cottage, monitoring your frequencies,
and recording spectran images when Andre's hard-disk died around 0230Z.  
A post mortem will take place to-morrow and we will try and recover some
of the images.

b) meanwhile, on the beach, and at your suggestion, we (WB5MMB, K0BRA and
K7UO) erected a 300 ft long (About 15 ft off the ground)  long-wire
antenna, with tuner.  We listened to your frequencies and other LF
stations and compared that with our standard e-field probe. Results were
inconclusive, with the e-field probe and the wire showing almost no
differences on the spectrograms.  The very slight differences were not
significant in deciding which might be better.

We never got any positive identification of any of your signals.

Around 0330, the wind gusts became so strong that we almost lost one of
our masts. The van in which we were monitoring transmissions started
rocking on its base, and we decided that time had come to retreat.

c) on the lighter side, while all of us were on the beach busy installing
the long-wire antenna, the Park Rangers came and decided to interview
those people doing strange things on their beach. We will soon post a
photograph on our web page of several of us being interviewed by the
local constabulary.    

d) We were able to hear a British-sounding station on 177 KHz (for just a
few moments) and also were able to hear BBC on 198KHz although a local
aero-beacon transmits on the same frequency. The propagation for the last
two nights was exceptionally good, with excellent reception (at times
sounding almost like a local station here ) of France Inter on 162 KHz
and Europe 1 on 183 KHz.

Because of the weather turning for the worse, we will close down our
operation tonight and will return to Washington tomorrow (Monday)
morning. 

Thanks to all of you for staying up late, getting your transmitters on
the air, and generally supporting us on this side of the pond.  We really
appreciate it.

Best 73

Andre N4ICK, Frank K0BRA, Joe K4OVK, Tracy K7UO and Sandy WB5MMB