Longwave Messages, Jan. 1997

• Longwave monitoring questions/comments.
• Part 15 experimental operation.
• Longwave loggings.
• General discussions.
• Comments and suggestions about this Web site.

• Subj: Unknown beacon
  Date: 97-01-30 21:23:57 EST
  From: rwilliam
  -
  Hi everybody ! This is Rich KA7IEN in Seattle, WA. I've successfully identified all the LW beacons in my log (except one) thanks to the AirNav and Canadian beacon databases. The very weak mystery beacon is on (approx.) 281 and ID's as SZ (or SMI) - hard to copy at my QTH. I'd be real intereseted to know what this beacon is if anybody could ID it.
  Also, I get RTTY on 76 khz. I suspect this may be the Jim Creek naval transmitter but I have been unable to verify it. Jim Creek is a multi-megawatt VLF transmitter about 30 miles north of me. I had the privilege of touring the facility about 12 years ago - all I can say is wow! It's a real mind-blower to see a transmitter and antenna array of that size. Very impressive. Too bad they didn't allow cameras, it would make for some killer .GIF's or JPG's !!

  • Reply 1:Subj: SZ on 281 kHz
    Date: 97-02-01 00:21:21 EST
    From: k0lr (Lyle Koehler)
    In response to the posting by Rich, KA7IEN:
    My old 1990 beacon guide shows SZ on 281 kHz as a 25-watt beacon from
    Seattle, WA (Boeing Fld - Parkk).
    -
    73 from Lyle, K0LR

• Subj: TS-940S on LF
  Date: 97-01-27 10:03:04 EST
  From: (Richard L Evans Jr)
  Hi Gang!
  I find the Kenwood TS-940S-AT to be a great unit on 160m and down, one of the best for dxing or contests. However, on MF BC the receiver is barely average, and on LW it stinks. I have an antenna farm of sorts, but have yet to hear a LOWFER beacon, even TH 80-miles away. Several commercial beacons can be heard on occasion, but reception is not what it should be.
  Does anyone have experience with the TS-940S on MF, LF? Any recommended mods? Is a converter the answer? Thanks.
  -
  Rich Evans W3FDY

  • Reply 1:Subj: TS-940S on LF
    Date: 97-01-29 01:52:40 EST
    From: k0lr (Lyle Koehler)
    To: rlevans@netcarrier.com
    -
    Hi Rich,
    I don't know about the TS-940S specifically. It's a great radio, but my general observations on solid state receivers and transceivers are that none of them, regardless of price, are worth a darn on LF without a converter or preamp. But with a fairly simple preamp or converter, almost any ham transceiver will do an excellent job. I'm surprised, though, that you can't hear TH at that distance. Although all serious LF listening here is done with a big loop and a high-gain preamp, my IC-751A will pick up LowFERs at 100 miles without a preamp on a 60-foot horizontal wire about 60 feet in the air. It's necessary to crank the audio gain wide open to make LowFERs audible on the speaker. The IC-706, on the other hand, can only receive the strongest local NDB's on the same antenna without a preamp.
    What kind of antennas are you using? Is there an HF tuner or transformer-type balun in line? Many HF tuners act like very effective high-pass filters and even the AM broadcast stations are strongly attenuated. Choke-type baluns (coiled-up lengths of coax or a bunch of ferrite beads on the outside of the coax) will pass everything down to DC, but transformer baluns probably roll off quickly below 1.8 MHz. An 80-meter dipole fed directly to the receiver's antenna connector should be equivalent to my 60-foot wire. Although I would expect a wire dipole or other other "long wire" type of antenna to be the best choice for LF reception, one of the local hams says he hears my beacon best on his 20-meter beam because it picks up less noise. Whatever works!
    A passive antenna tuner for the LF frequencies will help to match the high impedance of the antenna to the 50-ohm impedance of the receiver. You can experiment with various series and "L network" combinations of L and C, starting with a 365 pF or larger variable and a 2.5 millihenry RF choke. Sometimes just a 2.5 millihenry choke in series with the antenna lead will bring up LF signal levels and reduce broadcast station intermod.
    Noise is another consideration. Even in what appear to be quiet residential neighborhoods, the combination of light dimmers, touch lamps, TV sets and all the other RF crud generators that fill the modern household can make LF reception nearly impossible.
    Assuming that noise isn't the limiting factor, a high-gain preamp or converter can make a night and day difference in LF reception. My "universal" preamp might be a good choice in your situation because it works on both LF and MF. Details are available right here on the Longwave home page in the Longwave Antennas and Receivers library. You could probably leave out the regeneration stuff; if you already have a narrow CW filter in the TS-940S you would see little improvement with regeneration. The KF5CQ high-performance converter article is also available in the library. There are also several commercial preamps and active antennas that cover the LF range. I can't vouch for any of them because I haven't tried them, but they would probably give you a dramatic improvement in sensitivity.
    Sheldon Remington's The Art of NDB DXing is available on the Web via the Longwave home page. It's your best source of tips for longwave listening.
    -
    73 and good DX from Lyle, K0LR

• Subj: The obvious one, low frequency loggings.
  Date: 97-01-23 00:13:48 EST
  From: wa7aco (wa7aco)
  On several occasions over the years I've gotten my curiosity up about what can be heard below 500 Khz This has always been sort of a haphazard process at best. The last time this occured I strung a wire antenna from my boat, which I was living on at the time, along the tops of the pilings that hold the dock's in place. This might have worked OK except that I found that the interference from the low pressure sodium vapor street lights at the shore end of the antenna caused untold problems with noise.
  I then borrowed an active antenna from a friend of mine, Ernie, WA7EAQ and connected a 50 foot wire antenna running from the bow to the radar mast and back down to the receiving location. The receiver was an Icom R-71A. Getting away from the street lights some 200 plus feet made a real difference in the noise level. The active antenna really did a fine job and the performance with 50 feet of wire was far better than just the 200 feet of wire previously used.
  Over a period of perhaps two weeks or so I logged 300 + low frequency beacons. A few could be identified in the AM mode, but there was often several beacons on the same frequency. I went to either the sideband or CW modes and using various filter bandwidths and I was able to seperate the stations from one and another. I logged only the stations I was able to get a positive identification on. There were others in there which I wasn't sure of.
  At this time I was not on the internet, nor was I aware of the Lowfers group. What was interesting was that I came to the conclusion that the Icom R-71A receiver, while a really nice unit, was not anywhere optimized for work at these frequencies. Thanks to the articles in this web site, I have started collecting the parts to make a low frequency converter and pre-amp to provide a better receiving situation.
  I also got interested in receiving NAVTEX broadcast at 518 Khz. I was using an AEA Pakratt 232 as a terminal. I set up a 66 foot long, wire antenna tuned with a loading coil and a four gang, 365 mmf broadcast tuning capacitor all sections in parallel. The loading coil consisted of a piece of 2 1/4 inch OD PVC pipe wound with # 22 doorbell wire from end to end. The ground was to the water pipes conveniently just through the wall in the ham shack. The reception process was automatic and I would record each broadcast to a file on the hard drive.
  I have received NAVTEX broadcast from Miami Fl, New Orleans, La, somewhere in the Great Lakes area in Canada, possible somewhere along the Mississippi River judging by the locations referenced. Of course the stations from Los Angeles Ca, San Francisco Ca, Astoria Or, Seattle WA, Esquimalt BC and two or three locations in Alaska have been heard also. It was facinating to read the messages each morning that had come in throughout the night. I can occasionally get NAVTEX messages in the daytime from Astoria Or, and Seattle Wa.
  This E-mail may a little long, but it has become a very interesting hobby and a nice break from other amateur activities. Ferreting out these low powered stations from great distances has become a real challenge. Receiving anything approaching 100 Khz is impossible since the Loran station at George, Washington is only 35 miles north of my location. It gets into a lot of stuff including the broadcast band radio in the car.
  Anyway, thanks for letting me share this experience with you. Others have done more, but your first times at something like this are always looked back on as "the best there was" and you do learn as you go.
  -
  Russ Hughes WA7ACO
  Richland, Washington

• Subj: LW radio broadcasts
  Date: 97-01-10 14:59:48 EST
  From: ritolakareltek.fi (Mauno Ritola)
  Do you people listen to LW radio broadcasts? If so, IŽd be grateful to get from reliable information about Siberian stations and their local programs.
  Mauno Ritola
  Finland

  • Reply 1:
    Greetings, Mauno!
    There is some interest in LW broadcasts among Longwave Club of America members. However, this has not been one of our strong points because so much of the LW broadcast band is occupied by aeronautical beacons on this side of the Atlantic.
    I will mention your question in the February issue of our journal, The LOWDOWN, and online too. Perhaps we will find someone who specializes in broadcasters, and who might have the information you seek.
    Regards,
    John Davis

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• Subj: Where are all the Boston area low frequency buffs?
  Date: 97-01-26 02:08:20 EST
  From: (ashlock)
  My WA beacon at 187.55 has been on the air for over a year now and there's been only four signal reports that I'm aware of and one of these from my home town of Andover, MA. It's been confirmed that my signal gets out to at least a 50 mile radius which includes all of the Boston area.
  I receive TH out of New Jersey (250+ miles) every night in the winter season except for those nights when there's a high level of noise from storm activity. This beacon usually fades in and out in a typical 5 minute cycle time.
  Any Boston Lowfers out there?
  -
  Bill Ashlock

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NDB/Utility Loggings

• Subj: Unidentified Beacons
  Date: 97-01-21 20:51:09 EST
  Hi! This is Mark Nagel, N3FRP, in Beltsville, Maryland (halfway between Washington, DC and Baltimore, Md.). I hear several beacons every night which are not listed at http://www.airnav.com/. I hope you can help me identify their QTH's:
  (The frequencies below might be off by as much as 2 or 3 kHz because I use a Sony ICF-2010 receiver which has a 2.5 kHz filter)
  223 DA
  231 MX
  265 XPZ
  336 YFM
  351 YKQ
  358 RW
  386 NX
  391 3B
  401 LTV
  If you could help me identify these beacons, I would greatly appreciate it.
  Mark, N3FRP

  • Reply 2:Subj: Re: Unidentified beacons
    Date: 97-02-06 13:20:50 EST
    From: pthomson (Pierre Thomson)
    To: LWCANews
    In response to Mark Nagel's post and Lyle's reply:
    I have confirmed that 3B in Brockville, Ontario has indeed moved from 300 to 391 KHz. The Nov. 15 1996 Jeppessen data lists it as 391.
    I have updated the list at my Canadian beacon site: http://frodo.bruderhof.com/ka2qpg/.
    -
    73, Pierre Thomson KA2QPG

  • Reply 1:Date: 97-01-26 22:44:57 EST
    From: k0lr (Lyle Koehler)
    In response to Mark Nagel's request for information on NDBs, I checked a database that is now several years old and obviously out of date. Here are the results:
    223 DA Fort Belvoir, VA
    232 MX Camp Springs, MD (Andrews AFB)
    265 XPZ Winchester, VA
    332 YFM La Grande, PQ
    351 YKQ Fort Rupert, PQ
    360 RW Camp Springs, MD (Andrews AFB - Kirby)
    388 NXX Willow Grove, PA Naval Air Station (maybe now NX ????)
    391 3B Listed as 300 kHz, Brockville, ON
    401 LTV No listing
    Ken Stryker's Lost and Found department could give more up-to-date information on these beacons.
    -
    Lyle, K0LR

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LowFER Loggings