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: [email protected] YCCC --> http://www.yccc.org/ Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444 _______________________________________________ UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
