At 06:24 PM 5/31/2012, Jeff Woods/W0ODS wrote:
>Here's an interesting story:
>In the early 90's, I worked as a ship-board radio officer. At one of the
>training conferences, I met a fellow RO who also worked at the McMurdo
>Antarctic base when he wasn't on ships. During one of our (many and frequent)
>conversations after hours at the hotel bar, he mentioned an odd propagation
>mode at 5 kHz which only seemed to be present from pole-to-pole. The physics
>of this propagation are still unclear to me, but the salient point is that he
>also described the antenna.
>It was a simple dipole, cut for resonance, and strung for miles along the
>icecap. Ice is a good insulator, and the ice cap is thick enough to give a
>"ground mounted" dipole reasonable height even at VLF.
>At 160m, a dipole on the ice would act as though it were essentially in
>free-space.
>Feel free to fact check me on this. I was young. We were sailors. And we
>were drinking. :-) But it does bode well for helping Herb get his Antarctic
>merit badge some day.
It was probably KC4AAD Siple Station
They had something like a 100kw SCR device transmitter on 15 khz talking to
Roberville Quebec
Google is my friend
http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/vlf-transmitter-siple-station-antarctica
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siple_Station
When I was at Palmer Station KC4AAC (just a bit south of the South Shetrlands
on the Antarctic peninsula) I got to listen a lot on 160m but had no
transmitter. It was easy to hear ON4UN and some others because of the
extremely low noise level. I borrowed a 50w(?) ionospheric sounder (actually a
modified DX-40 or DX-60) from a British science experiment on several nights
that did cover 160m. I don't think I ever worked anything other than South
American stations.
-- Tom/K1KI, x-KC4AAC opr 1976-77
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e-mail: frenaye@pcnet.com YCCC --> http://www.yccc.org/
Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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