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Re: VLF: DK7FC's 9th VLF kite experiment

To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: VLF: DK7FC's 9th VLF kite experiment
From: Stefan Schäfer <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:22:30 +0100
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Hi Chris,

Well, in the last experiments my ERP was increased each time. But now i am reaching some limits. 300m is one limit. Now i can just reduce the losses and/or increase the TX power. Thus i have thought about what is possible. My coil losses are about 180 Ohms but the overall losses are above 500 Ohm so the major part is the earth losses! So this is why i indeed planned to reduce the losses in the next step.
There is a (metallic)street sign about 130m away. Next i will try to use it as a earth rod and will add another copper earth rod nearby. I will use a thin copper wire to connect it to the coil, probably some 0.4mm telephone copper wire which will have a R of 18 Ohm but anyway i assume to reduce the losses hereby. I have to be careful about hammering too much rods into the soil there since the land is used by farmers who can be very angry sometimes. Another idea would be /p earth rods but there are a lot of stones in the soil so it is difficult sometimes. Anyway i will try to  reduce the losses some 100 Ohms. If i would wind a second TX coil, rather compact and out of bigger wire, i think i could reduce the coil losses by 100 Ohm as well!
So, if i can reach the goal of reducing the losses by 50 %, which seems realistic, i will get another 3 dB ERP and by using a 2 kW generator i will get another 6 dB. So maybe my absolute limit will be 0.5 W ERP on 8970 Hz some day (which is nothing compared to 2 kW ERP on 137 kHz, theoretically ;-) )! Then i am back at 30 kV rms on the 300m wire which is the limit for this wire as well! Sounds like a challenge :-)

73, Stefan

PS: On VLF/(LF) it is rather important to have a good ground connection instead of (insulated) wires directly lying on the ground since the wire length is always << Lambda. This connection can be achieved by galvanic coupling, i.e. earth rods or by capacitive coupling, i.e. a metallic foil on the bottom. My copper plate i a combination of that but one can clearly see that the capacitive coupling works worse on VLF, as expected.

Am 10.12.2010 15:46, schrieb Chris:
Thanks Stefan.
Nice way of showing your excellent results, again, well done!
The pictures your site visitor took are very good also, which gave me an idea - there seems to be a very large amount of ground at your /P site, have you thought of trying some long radials (2 maybe) laying on the ground? I know this would be extra work, especially if you wanted to resonate them(!), but I wonder what the effect would be. I know for sure this works well on topband.
Vy 73,
Chris, G4AYT.

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