Topband: RI1ANF

[Tom Frenaye]

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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