Hi Roger,

Your TX/RX may be giving disappointing results at the moment, but your VLF
web page is certainly not.  Keep up the good work -- it is inspiring and appreciated.

So far, my best VLF DX is 4.7 km with QRSS and 2 km on CW and 1 km with a
portable home brew CW RX and PA0RDT miniwhip.

73
Joe VO1NA

On Mon, 20 Apr 2015, Roger Lapthorn wrote:

As many of you will recall I had a cerebellum brain bleed in September
2013. I was in hospital for 3.5 months and not at all well. Thankfully, I
am still recovering, albeit very slowly.

Today I did my first proper earth-mode VLF field test at 8.976kHz from the
QTH we moved in to just before I was taken ill. I was using the 5W QRSS3
beacon into the same earth-electrode set-up used successfully at 472kHz. I
went to a RX test site I'd used many times before when TXing from the old
QTH, where I used to get strong signals, but this time there was *absolutely
no copy at all*. I even tried 0.3km from the new QTH without success.
Clearly, whatever utilities were helping at the old QTH are *not* there at
the newer QTH. From the old QTH, 6km had been spanned by utilities assisted
earth-mode with the same 5W QRSS3 TX.

Altogether a very disappointing day, but this was my first field test in
over 18 months. More details and photos on my blog at
http://g3xbm-qrp.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/vlf-field-test-total-failure.html .
I am sure there will be a good explanation for these results.

After the tests I was exhausted. In the past this test would have been
trivial. Value good health, as you do not know what is around the corner!

73s

Roger G3XBM