On july 4th 2004 there was another historical transmission of SAQ. This vlf station is located at Grimeton in Sweden.
For more information about this station : http://www.alexander.n.se
My ‘contest’ to receive this station starts at 5:45 local time (3:45 UTC). My wife works in a hospital as a midwife and has the early morning shift. And guess who has to bring her ?
Took our 2 year old daughter with us, dropped off my wife and went home. Gathered all my equipment and drove to my parents. They live about 23 km from our home, in a small village called Heist op den Berg, locator is JO21IB and there is less noise than in my area. It is now 7:30 (5:30 UTC). In my hurry I forgot the fishing rod that I use to attach my wire antenna to. No problem, trees enough at my parents. Set the whole station up and went back inside to wait. Around 10:25 (8:25 UTC) I started to record the incoming sound. Few minutes later there was a tuning sound followed by a good audible CW code. As my ham licence doesn’t require me to know CW, the signal isn’t understandable to me. But this is not my major goal.
I can receive them !
At 12:30 (10:30 UTC) the following recording is made : MP3 audio file. (738 kB)
This file went thru some amplifying, filtering and resampling stages.
On the following picture you can see a screen capture of the CW signal (left) and the RTTY signal of RDL (right).
My station equipment :
– McGreevy BBB4 vlf receiver with 3 meter antenna
– IBM Thinkpad portable computer
– Spectrum Lab from DL4YHF
Here’s a picture of my station :
On the left is my fishing rod in a small red tube. This red tube has a grounding pin that is connected to my RX. The yellow wire is the 3 meter long antenna. And the RX of course, on the right the laptop.
Until next year ?
