[Lf] A modest proposal...

[Andre Kesteloot]

Jake Brodsky wrote:

> I'm curious if any of you have discussed the possibility of large
> scale synchronous reception on LF.

YES we have, but haven't done much about it yet!  :-)

As you probably know, we (AMRAD/DARC/RSGB) awarded the 1st "over the 
Atlantic" Peter Bobek Awards last month for a two-way communication 
that took several   _days_ to be completed (between England and Canada).

In addition, we also awarded a certificate to W4DEX for the longest path
reception of a British signal on 136 kHz.

There is nothing that says that we must integrate the reception from
several sites in  _real time_. After all we are talking about dot length
of one minute ...

Hence, if Ham Station A has a  precise time reference (from a GPS 
receiver), receives on a certain frequency for, say, one hour, and then 
ships the received data --through the internet, for instance-- 
to Ham Station B, then B should be able, with suitable amounts of 
DSP, to correlate both signals and eventually get the desired signal 
out of the crud.

Let's try it.  

Our 136.745 beacon (Front Royal, Virginia) is down right
now for antenna maintenance, but should be back on the air within 10
days.

We could then try and receive it from several places, and integrate /
correlate the received signals with time information.  That signal was
received regularly as far as London, Ontario.  By working on a known
signal first, and sharpening our techniques, we could then try and
receive invisible signals (i.e., lost in the noise), such as British 
Hams, etc.

Let's do it and see what happens.

73
André