On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 16:13:30 -0500, rickman wrote:

A specific question about the USB RTL-SDR. Would it and the software
allow me to get much detail in the LF band, specifically around 60 kHz?
That's an area I would like to do some work in.

Y're guilty of topic drift. Give yourself a slap across the knuckles
with a wooden ruler.

The RTL2832 and R820T2 tuner covers 24 - 1766 Mhz. You can buy
upconverters but they typically bottom out at 100Khz.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/182423524669
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=rtl-dsp+upconverter
This is NOT the way to do WWVB.

The best way is to use a PC and a sound card. I learned the hard and
somewhat expensive way that an internal sound card is a great way to
analyze the spectrum of all the crap being generated inside the
computah. Therefore, I suggest an external USB sound card, that runs
at 192Kbits/sec or 384Kbits/sec.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=192khz+sound+card+usb
I don't actually have one of these, but was able to play with one for
a few days with tolerable results.

There are examples of sound card VLF receivers on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2W1x6Rb9hI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwxdZ0fY8fM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrJ77GiBNQw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2W1x6Rb9hI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKSOoZ2vhvo
SDR-sharp is the most common software used.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 14:45:25 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 16:13:30 -0500, rickman wrote:

A specific question about the USB RTL-SDR. Would it and the software
allow me to get much detail in the LF band, specifically around 60 kHz?
That's an area I would like to do some work in.

Y're guilty of topic drift. Give yourself a slap across the knuckles
with a wooden ruler.

+1 I am not aware of too many 60kHz yagi antennas

On 1/27/2017 7:06 PM, Pat wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 14:45:25 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 16:13:30 -0500, rickman wrote:

A specific question about the USB RTL-SDR. Would it and the software
allow me to get much detail in the LF band, specifically around 60 kHz?
That's an area I would like to do some work in.

Y're guilty of topic drift. Give yourself a slap across the knuckles
with a wooden ruler.

+1 I am not aware of too many 60kHz yagi antennas

You don't notice them sort of like not noticing the galactic super
cluster we are in.

--

Rick C

On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 19:32:33 -0500, rickman wrote:

You don't notice them sort of like not noticing the galactic super
cluster we are in.

Kinda like distracted driving. You don't notice things until you run
into them.

Anyway, 900 MHz yagi antennas are kinda pedestrian. Getting something
to work at VLF frequencies is a real challenge. Incidentally, did you
know that the original plan was for WWVB to transmit on 20KHz instead
of 60KHz? 2.2% radiation efficiency at 20KHz:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4487279/#__sec8title
Almost what Tesla was trying to build.

Too bad WWVB doesn't have a voice announcement:
http://www.lownoiserecords.com/wwv_the_tick.html
(Click on the big yellow square)

We return you now to sanity.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

In article ,
Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Anyway, 900 MHz yagi antennas are kinda pedestrian. Getting something
to work at VLF frequencies is a real challenge.

Not all that hard, really. All you have to do is lay out a redundent
pair of oil pipelines along the proper courses, and you can make a VLF
rhombic large enough to be seen from geostationary orbit :-)

On Fri, 27 Jan 2017, Dave Platt wrote:

In article ,
Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Anyway, 900 MHz yagi antennas are kinda pedestrian. Getting something
to work at VLF frequencies is a real challenge.

Not all that hard, really. All you have to do is lay out a redundent
pair of oil pipelines along the proper courses, and you can make a VLF
rhombic large enough to be seen from geostationary orbit :-)

I think it wsa in the surplus column in CQ in the sixties, someone wrote
about a long wave station up for sale, and added that they had to keep
replacing the buried ground wires, because treasure hunters would stumble
on it and take some. A little hard to contain that sort of thing when
it's so big.

Then there was VK3ATN who did moonbounce from Australia in the sixties,
with rhombics. He could make slight adjustments because he'd had some
rigging to adjust something, so he got a bit more time, but it was limited
to a few days a month. But with the 100W limit of Australia (it was
something like that) he did fine with the rhombics.

Of course, he lived in the outback, so he had endless space, just needed
telephone poles and wire. He had rhombics for a few bands.

Michael

On 1/28/2017 10:19 AM, Michael Black wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jan 2017, Dave Platt wrote:

In article ,
Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Anyway, 900 MHz yagi antennas are kinda pedestrian. Getting something
to work at VLF frequencies is a real challenge.

Not all that hard, really. All you have to do is lay out a redundent
pair of oil pipelines along the proper courses, and you can make a VLF
rhombic large enough to be seen from geostationary orbit :-)

I think it wsa in the surplus column in CQ in the sixties, someone wrote
about a long wave station up for sale, and added that they had to keep
replacing the buried ground wires, because treasure hunters would
stumble on it and take some. A little hard to contain that sort of
thing when it's so big.

Then there was VK3ATN who did moonbounce from Australia in the sixties,
with rhombics. He could make slight adjustments because he'd had some
rigging to adjust something, so he got a bit more time, but it was
limited to a few days a month. But with the 100W limit of Australia (it
was something like that) he did fine with the rhombics.

Of course, he lived in the outback, so he had endless space, just needed
telephone poles and wire. He had rhombics for a few bands.

A friend bought a house some 10 years ago and I looked it up on Google.
The pictures showed a humongous Yagi over the house which must have been
for 20 meters or maybe 40. The 4 element antenna was much larger than
the house! There were (and still are) three guy points which are huge I
beams in concrete around the house. In the basement there was what had
been his radio shack with sound proofing and EMI screen. I was
impressed, but everything other than the guy points is gone now.

--

Rick C

On Fri, 27 Jan 2017, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 19:32:33 -0500, rickman wrote:

You don't notice them sort of like not noticing the galactic super
cluster we are in.

Kinda like distracted driving. You don't notice things until you run
into them.

Anyway, 900 MHz yagi antennas are kinda pedestrian. Getting something
to work at VLF frequencies is a real challenge. Incidentally, did you
know that the original plan was for WWVB to transmit on 20KHz instead
of 60KHz? 2.2% radiation efficiency at 20KHz:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4487279/#__sec8title
Almost what Tesla was trying to build.

For a long time, there was WWVL at 20KHz. References to that may have
been more common in the sixties than to WWVB, which seemed to get
attention in the seventies especially since it sent out time code.

References to WWVL seem to be mostly erased at this point.

Michael