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
e-mail: fren...@pcnet.comYCCC -- 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
