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-LF news past....2004.

• December

  • 29/12. Jason crosses the Atlantic. Last night Hartmut Wolf copied WD2XES using the new experimental "slow" version of I2PHD's Jason software. Update: Latest 0.99 version is now available from Weaksignals.com

  • 12/12. Full ID of XGJ. WD2XGJ has now been copied in QRSS by Hartmut Wolf, DF6NM, G3YXM, M0BMU, G3NYK and others so is getting out very well. Just wait 'til he gets that 1kW Decca TX going...

  • 2/12. WD2XGJ copied across "the pond". Warren, K2ORS who operates part 5 station WD2XGJ has informed me that his part5 station was copied by G3NYK, Hartmut Wolf and CT1DRP last night. Warren was manually shifting between 137.779 and 137.7788, giving the "square-wave" display you can see on Hartmut's grab. Warren runs 250W from a G0MRF TX into a loop.
    

  
  

• November

  • 12/11. First US 137kHz QSO. John W1TAG (experimental license WD2XES) and Warren K2ORS (WD2XGJ) had the first two way Part 5 QSO in the U.S. at 0200 today on CW. They are about 25 miles (40km) apart and both stations used transmit loop antennas. John was running 200W and Warren 250W. Warren's RX was an HP 3586C selective level meter and John used his ICOM R75. Jay Rusgrove (about 100 miles South) made an MP3 of the QSO: http://www.advancedreceiver.com/capture/XESXGJ.mp3 Congratulations to both stations.

  • 7/11. New grabber in Hungary. HA6PX has added his own grabber to the HG6N page at http://www.starjan.hu/~ha6px/SCG.htm so now there's two for the price of one!

• October

  • 30/10. Loran QRM threat. Rugby radio has won a contract to radiate a test Loran signal for two years. This pulse system on 100kHz tends to spread into the 136kHz band...

  • 29/10. XDW spans the globe. US beacon WD2XDW from Oklahoma has been copied by ZL4OL on several occasions recently and also by Hartmut Wolf in Northern Germany. Laurence has recently upgraded to a Decca transmitter and uses 1kw of power into his loop antenna.

  • 23/10. OM2TW back on. Rich reports that the radio club has moved to a new QTH in JN88VJ on the top of the small hill. They have a 30m high tower and have just set up the VHF and HF antennas. During the Marconi Memorial Contest (November 6th and 7th) they will be QRV on 136kHz.

  • 21/10. New Hungarian grabber. Csaba HA6PN and Gyuri HA6PC have installed a new receiver, built by Gyuri at the HG6N club station in JN98VE. It has a 400m longwire antenna. There is no pretty web page yet but the grabber is live at http://www.starjan.hu/~ha6px/LF/hg6n.jpg showing 137.6 to 137.8 I tried it, it works! Soon it will feature on the club website.

  • 20/10. Look out for MB2HFC this weekend. The RSGB Convention will have an LF station active once more this year. The station should be on-air from Friday afternoon through to Sunday afternoon (22nd-24th) and will use CW and QRSS. They hope to have a good TX antenna courtesy of the Crawley club's 30m tower, but reception conditions won't be known until they get there!

  • 16/10. DLs get 1W ERP. The DARC web-site reports that German amateurs are to lose the 20W PEP limit that has made things difficult until now, and come into line with most of Europe. This should mean some bigger signals from DL (and bigger explosions too...)

  • 15/10. 500kHz proposal sent to Ofcom. The RSGB have submitted a proposal to allow UK radio amateurs to have access to frequencies between 501-504 kHz or 508-515 KHz at a transmit level of 10W ERIP. The idea is that this should be on an experimental basis, by issue of NOVs. Full info is here.

  • 11/10. First EA/PA QSO. José EA1PX worked Wil PA0BWL on QRSS3 this evening. José sent an M report and Wil gave an O.

  • 9/10. VA3LK silent key. 136kHz pioneer Larry Kayser died suddenly on October 5th, he was 64. In 2001, after 18 months of preparation, he made one of the first trans-Atlantic QSOs with G3AQC, a distance record which stood for 3 years. He had been planning to move to Newfoundland to achieve his next dream of crossing the Atlantic on 2 metres.

  • 3/10. RU6LA copied in ZL. Bob ZL2CA and Andrew ZL2BBJ copied Ed's test last night. Bob's copy of the 120 second QRSS approached "O" around dawn and Andrew got a "T" copy.
    

  • 2/10. Canada end-to-end. Mitch VE3OT in London Ontario copied VO1NA and VE7TIL on the same Argo screen last night. See full details and his screen grab here.

• September

  • 27/9. 'XES copied in Germany. Listener Hartmut Wolff got the best copy yet of beacon WD2XES on DFCW this morning at 0500. XES is operated by John Andrews W1TAG and is in Holden MA, FN42CH. http://webpages.charter.net/w1tag/ Hartmut is in JO52HO, I make that 5960km.
    

  • 25/9. Jason test from TIL. Becon TIL (Vancouver) is presently on 137778Hz beaconing in JASON mode.

  • 22/9. US/Canada Beacons. Conditions are pretty good at the moment with regular copy of VO1NA on 137.777kHz 30s QRSS. Look out also for TIL on 137.780 WD2XDW on 137.7752 WD2XFX on 137.7807 and WD2XES on 137.7792 . Check The Grabber to see what's coming through.

  • 11/9. 'TIL copied in Oklahoma. For several of the last few days Laurence (KL1X) has copied VE7TIL's 137kHz beacon around dawn. The distance from Vancouver BC to Bartlesville OK is about 2600km. See a screenshot.

  • 4/9. Argentina active. Also on September 18/19th, LW2ETU will be active from Avellaneda and is seeking reports. Transmission is to run from Saturday at1500utc to Sunday 1500utc on 137.422kHz +/- 0.2Hz in qrss30. The antenna will be 100m wire and the TX power will be 120W.

  • 4/9. Activity weekend. The Württemberg DARC group will be on air on 136 khz over the weekend of September 18/19. They plan to use a 22m top-loaded vertical with a large capacity hat. They would like to make as many contacts as possible. More info on their web-site..

• August

  • 25/8. WD2XDW re-issued. Laurence, KL1X, has finally received his part 5 permit to operate from Northern Oklahoma. He can use 135.895-137.785 kHZ at 5W erp. Aerial prospects are not as good as in Alaska so a loop will probably be tried.

  • 22/8. Another Canadian QSO. Joe Craig VO1NA, today worked the Marconi club station VO1MRC, operated by Frank VO1HP. The distance was only 10km but it is Joe's first conventional CW QSO. VO1MRP was running only 3W and VO1NA 10W.

  • 3/8. Trans-rockies test. VE3OT is off to VE6, taking his 5ft octo-loop with him. When there he will conduct tests with VE7TIL and VE7SL who will be increasing power as they develop their systems.

• July

  • 13/7. VE news. VE7SL in Mayne Island and VE7TIL in Vancouver had a QSO on 10th over a distance of about 50km. No great distance but a first for Western Canada. They then both went into beacon mode and got reports from Southern Oregon. Not bad for a first attempt!

  • 11/7. Fiji report. Laurence is back from Fiji and reports great reception conditions with low noise. The K9AY antenna worked well and he was impressed with the FRG100 receiver. Laurence logged signals on 138.8 but cannot positively confirm that it was DCF39. See his photos and screenshots here.

  • 9/7. VE7TIL on 136. Scott is to run some tests this weekend and will attempt a QSO with VE7SL. Some beacon and QRO tests will be conducted over the nex week or so. Check Scott's Web-Site for details.

  • 4/7. World heritage status for SAQ. UNESCO have declared that the Varberg Radio Staion at Grimeton Sweden is to be a World Heritage Site. Hopefully this will ensure its continued survival. See info here.

• June

  • 29/6. New VE activity. Steve VE7SL has his station running on test with only 35W at present, soon to up it to 300W. Scott VE7TIL has now received permission to start 1W EIRP transmissions from his Industry QTH.

  • 26/6. ZL to Fiji on CW. ZM2E had a crossband QSO with 3D2KL today. Signals were so good,even before sunset, that the Argo trace bloomed too much to read. In the end they completed the QSO with 15wpm CW from ZM2E being read at 559 in Fiji. 3D2KL was on 40m SSB.

  • 23/6. RU6LA beacon. Ed will be at his "DX" QTH near Machta (KN97LN) for the next few evenings. On June 23, 24 and 25 he will transmit on 137.785 from 17z - 20z then QSY to 135.9225 from 20z - 02z, all in QRSS120. On June 26 he will just do the 135.9225 stint from 20z - 02z (June 27). Local sunset 1715z and sunrise is 0140z.

  • 22/6. ZL QSO attempts. The Quartz Hill ZL6QH club station will be activated on LF this coming Saturday night. The usual 137.7890/137.7886 kHz DFCW120 QQQQQ... beacon will run from before ZL sunset till after ZL sunrise, except for times selected for: (1) attempting an LF/HF crossband QSO with 3D2KL, starting with DFCW60 (we will adapt to conditions at the time) and (2) attempting an LF SSB QSO with AX2TAR in VK7. The special call sign ZM2E will be used for the attempted QSOs.

  • 20/6. Fiji update. Laurence is set up and monitoring the region around 137.780. He reports a low noise level despite occasional static crashes.

  • 11/6. Fiji listening. Laurence KL1X will be setting up in Fiji (3D2) on 19/20th June and should be receiving up till around 8th July - these dates may vary but it is hoped that the station will stay monitoring even if Laurence is not as base camp. Base will be about 45 miles drive from Suva on the S side of the Island.

  • 7/6.SAQ on-air again. The vintage Alexanderson alternator at Grimeton Sweden, is to go on air on 17.2 kHz on Sunday 4th July at 08:30 10:30 and 12:30UTC. Amateur station SA6Q will be active on 14.035 MHz CW 14.215 MHz SSB.

  • 7/6. Test from Madrid. EA4BVZ will be testing tonight from 2000-2400z on 137.252kHz. Schedule as follows: 20h to 20.02 - 20 wpm, 20.02 to 20.10 - QRSS Dot 3 and 20.10 to 24z - QRSS Dot 30. Power output about 50 W.

• May

  • 20/5. LF field day. On June 12th and 13th DN1VLF will be active from JO22KK, Phöben near Berlin, Germany. They hope to be on-air by 11:00 UTC on 12th and to close around 13:00 on 13th. Frequencies will be 137.710 KHz QRSS (starting every even hour) and 136.710 KHz CW (starting every odd hour) Antenna will be 30m toploaded vertical.

  • 7/5. WD2XFX back on air. Eric, KD5UWL reports that his beacon is now back on 137.778077kHz. See here for all the details.

• April

  • 21/4. VO1NA audible in Germany. Joe has been sending some 5wpm tests over the past few nights, best report so far has been from Hartmut in Locator JO52HO.

  • 15/4. Grey-line tests comtinue. Following RN6BN's success, several other European stations have been beaconing to see if there is a grey-line path to ZL. One of these is CT1DRP near Porto whose signals were picked up by OH1TN at a distance of 3364km.

  • 12/4. RN6BN copied in ZL by Bob ZL2CA around 1830 yesterday evening (ZL sunrise). The signal peaked to "O" copy on QRSS60, see Bob's screenshot. Obviously this is the new world record one-way at over 15,000km!
    

  • 7/4. New on the band. John in Weymouth has been steadily improving his signal and is at last getting some QSOs. He will be calling on CW at around 1930 most evenings and would very much appreciate reports. Update: Rig's blown up, back soon... Also look out for G3IFF, Ray in Havant.

• March

  • 27/3. Pictures from UA0LE. See the Gallery for some nice photographs from the Vladivostok expedition. Under the heading "UA0LE"

  • 27/3. Good T/A conditions. G3LDO and M0BMU have both worked VO1NA and last night he was copied in 1 second QRSS by M0BMU (shown below) and weakly by DF6NM. WD2XES was also copied last night with 100W to the loop.
    

  • 24/3. UA0/UA6 QSOs. UA0LE have now worked RU6LWZ and RN6BN, signals were sometimes audible so propagation is improving to the West. The UA0/ZL path continues to be good with signals being regularly received by several ZLs. So far no reports from Western Europe but we're still listening!
    
    Here is a shot of RN6BN as received in UA0 on 30s QRSS.

  • 20/3. UA0 / ZL QSO. They made it! This must be the new world record LF QSO. See screen shots from Ed here.

  • 18/3. UA0LE on air. The team are all set up nr Vladivostok with an 80m high TX antenna and a 2km long receive antenna! So far they have copied RN6BN and have been received in ZL by ZL2CA, ZL2BBJ and ZL4OL at their home QTHs. The distance to ZL4OL is about 10,750km. The ZLs will attempt a QSO from Quartz Hill on Saturday. The station has also been received well by RN6BN and has worked UA6LV. See the full schedule for UA0LE.

  • 13/3. WD2XES beacon received in CT. CT1DRP copied one of John's early test transmissions last night. He was using only 75W RF to a loop antenna and conditions weren't very good as can been seen from the fading on VO1NA's signal. WD2XES is in Holden MA at the QTH of W1TAG.

  • 8/3. Full timetable for UA0 trip. Ed has published his full schedule for the operation from near Vladivostok March 16th-27th.

  • 8/3. ZLs attempt QSO with UA0. Quartz-Hill club will be active on the night of Saturday 20th March in order to attempt a QSO with Ed. They will be on 0.4 Hz FSK, using 137.7890 / 137.7886 kHz and will beacon from ZL sunset until 0930 utc when the attempt will begin. If allowed, they will use the call ZM2E for the QSO.

  • 5/3. New grabber on line. Sam, RN6BN has been getting a good copy of VO1NA over the last week or so. He is now able to run a live grabber. It will be on this weekend at http://iq.73.ru/capt.jpg

  • 4/3. Server problems. Due to problems at my ISP it may be necessary to refresh this page by holding CTRL whilst pressing the F5 key. This will pull down the latest version from the server rather than the web-cached version which may be out of date.

• February

  • 25/2. VO - RN. Sam, RN6BM got copy of VO1NA's test transmission last night. The distance is about 6,600km which is pretty good for a fairly low ERP.

  • 23/2. New version of Africam. Bill de Carle has released V4.6 of his "below the noise" communications program. Download it here.

  • 22/2. G0MIN back on LF. The Whitton club in West London used to be active on LF on a club night (Fridays) but was forced off the air by trees growing under the antenna. The trees have recently been felled allowing the club to return to 136kHz with their 250ft church-tower supported wire. Look out for them.

  • 13/2. Expedition to Asia. From March 16-28th, Ed Lesnichy and others will undertake a DXpedition to the far Eastern part of Asian Russia (UA0L). QTH-Loc will be approximately PN63CH nr Vladivostok. Call will be UA0LE (for slow QRSS UATLE, replacing the 0 with T as in contests) They will have access to a 90m tower. More details as they are decided.

  • 11/2. Noticeboard down. Due to some server relocation work the noticeboard is temporarily off air.

• January

  • 30/1. PA0SE makes it across. Dick has set up his system for QRSS recently and has been very pleased with the results. His 140mW erp signal was received at "O" copy around 0200hrs by VO1NA and at audible stregth by EA1PX. Harry's (PA0LQ) 300W valve TX is certainly being put to good use!

  • 27/1. T/A QSO. Peter G3LDO and Joe VO1NA made a QRSS QSO on the night of the 27th. Congratulations both!

  • 19/1. Weekend report. Conditions did not seem exceptionally good over the weekend but snatches of RU6LA were seen by CT1DRP and Ed's signal was widely received in G / DL etc. Rich had some problems matching the MW tower, possibly due to low-value decoupling chokes, so no signals were radiated from OM2TW.

  • 13/1. Big Signal weekend. RU6LA and OM2TW will both be active from sites having big masts this weekend.

    • OM2TW's schedule is detailed here. They will have E-mail (om2tw@nextra.sk) and phone +421 903 416609 (for SMS).

    • RU6LA plans activity on 136kHz CW and QRSS. Ed hopes to TX QRSS60 beacons in the 135.922 - 136.923 segment from 22...23z up to sunrise at Machta - abt 0515z

  • 11/1. First "Wolf" QSO? Lowfers (1W DC input) NC and TAG (671 mile path) have finally succeeded with the first known WOLF QSO. They had tried this at night a couple of years ago, but the fading created a lot of missed copy. Following Alan Melia's suggestion that the daytime path might be good two days after a CME impact, they tried it again this morning and succeeded. The results are spelled out in detail here. Well done Dex and John, Alan for his advice, and Stewart Nelson for writing the program.

  • 7/1. WD2XDW QRT. Laurence is finally moving South so beacon WD2XDW has closed down. It is hoped that he can get a part 5 permit from the new QTH. The receivers at KL1X.com will stay on until the mast comes down in a few days.

  • 4/1. North to Alaska! Trans-Atlantic test transmissions from G3LDO and DF6NM have been received by KL1X near Anchorage on the night of Jan2/3. Reception by the East coast USA stations was also possible but by no means exceptional.

  • 2/1. First OM/GM QSO. It looks as if the contact I had from GM3YXM with OM2TW was a first. Thanks Rich!

On to 2005---Back to 2003.