 | | The LOWDOWN This Month
In the February 2010 issue of the club publication:
- "DX Downstairs" Kevin Carey presents members' LF and VLF loggings.
- "On The Air" Experimenters operating on the 160-190kHz and 136kHz bands ... and...
- "Operator Contact List" How to reach the ops ... and...
- "The LF Notebook" Conducted by John Davis. News of LF radio happenings for, from, by, and about LWCA members. This month, a quick look at the history of LORAN on LF.
- "Natural Radio" Conducted by Mark Karney.
- "News From the Old World" Alan Gale keeps us informed of LF experimentation on the "other side of the pond."
- "LF Receiver Performance" (Pt 6) In this installment, John Reed tests two NRD-525 communication receivers, one standard and one with custom modifications.
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| | US to Discontinue LORAN-C Starting in February
The Department of Homeland Security and the US Coast Guard published the public notices required for termination of 100 kHz LORAN transmissions in the US in the Federal Register on January 7, 2010. The first major phase of the decommissioning will be the shutdown of all US-only LORAN chains at 2000 UTC (3 PM EST) on 8 February. However, US-based transmitters which are also part of Canadian and Russian chains under international treaty will remain operational until 1 October.
Costas Krallis reported to the LW Message Board earlier about a news report at Inside GNSS announcing that the notices were about to be published, and providing links to them. That page has since been updated with more details.
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| | Related Longwave Sites
•William Hepburn's DX Information Centre features many kinds of DX resources, including much on services found at LF and VLF; for example, regularly updated lists of NAVTEX and TWEB (Transcribed Weather) stations, LF/VLF time signals, and longwave broadcasters. Visit the site at its new location:
DX Information Centre. Don't overlook the pages for higher frequencies, and the propagation forecasts as well.
•Radio Waves Below 22 kHz Renato Romero's eclectic collection of topics pertaining to both manmade and natural radio signals from near DC to the upper end of audibility. Includes the VLF Open Lab, and articles by many contributors...some fairly orthodox, and some not. Visit: www.vlf.it
•Whistler Receiver Online Hear a NASA Project INSPIRE receiver in near-real-time from Huntsville, Alabama. Lots of sferics, including tweaks and occasional whistlers, should be audible, particularly in the hours just before dawn at the receiving site. Listen to the receiver through the SpaceWeather INSPIRE page and get more background on whistlers and related phenomena from this NASA news headline.
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| | QRSS and WOLF Software
Rik Strobbe's QRSS software (for transmitting extremely slow CW) is usually available from our file library, but while it is temporarily out of service, you can obtain QRSS and Rik's other useful software at the ON7YD download page.
Continuing Development of Argo. Alberto di Bene regularly posts the latest version of Argo, a receiving tool for displaying slow CW, that performs FFT spectral analysis and displays it in ways optimized for QRSS. Many of the transoceanic LF amateur records were set using Argo at the receiving end. Argo has somewhat similar performance to Spectran, but interacts better with the user's soundcard and is customized for QRSS modes.
Slow CW for Linux. Claudio Girardi (IN3OTD) has released the next version of his Slow CW software for users of the Linux operating system, alpha 0.3.1. The program (called glfer) contains both transmit and receive capability, the latter including an FFT-based spectrum analyzer somewhat similar to those found in popular Windows Slow CW programs.
As with much open-source software in the X-world, you have to compile the C source code yourself. Users will also need additional code libraries. Links to those, plus downloadable source code, can be found at Claudio's glfer page.
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