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Re: LF: RE: The next experiment on 970 Hz - Cracked the far field border

To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: LF: RE: The next experiment on 970 Hz - Cracked the far field border below 1 kHz
From: DK7FC <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2018 09:18:41 +0200
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Hi Jim,

Thank you.
Yes, it is still a bit hard to belive that i reached the far field in the 309 km band. What can be done on lower frequencies? Can i reach SLF on that distance and with this system(s)? It will be tested!

Meanwhile i got some better results for the carrier extraction:
vtread -T2018-09-29_08:05,+3h /raw | vtcat -p | vtmix -c-0.1,1,-0.2 | vtfilter -a th=7 -h lp,f=1500,poles=8 -h hp,f=400,poles=8 | vtblank -a29 -d0.0005 -t100 | vtmult -f970.01 | vtresample -r240 | vtresample -r1 | vtraw -oa | ebnaut -dp8K19A -r1 -c2 -v -f15 -f16 -M'***' -N3 -k20 -S24
carrier phase: 70.1
carrier Eb/N0: 2.5 dB
carrier S/N: 14.82 dB in 93.0 uHz, -25.50 dB in 1Hz, -59.48 dB in 2.5kHz


...so now there is a small portion of the E-W loop and the E field antenna in the mix. But it makes only a difference of less than 0.2 dB.

It would be good to have a radio amateur in adistance of 100 km or so but then he must have a really sensitive antenna and low QRM on that frequency/ frequency range. That is a problem. So i'm staying a lonely operator in that deep range :-)
Today i want to try to send an EbNaut message over the distance. I'd better use a shorter message, just 3 characters instead of 5.

More soon...

73, Stefan

PS: In my last experiment, almost a year ago, i used the E field TX antenna. 12 kV antenna voltage resulted in about the same SNR, but when stacking 3 days. Now i need just 3 hours! Tells something about the performance of this loop...




Am 01.10.2018 01:30, schrieb [email protected]:

Stefan,

 

Congratulations! A great milestone for many reasons.

 

Amazing to think of far-field at that frequency without tons of antenna; a credit to design, test planning, and test execution.

 

Below 2 KHz is new territory for many reasons including markedly different sky propagation and changing earth propagation which also affects the character of noise*.

 

Your (more than) year of considerable effort toward this goal probably kept many on the edge of their seats, me included, I’m celebrating.

 

In free space the electric field at a receiving antenna 0.18 wavelengths away from a transmitting loop antenna should be very good compared to the magnetic field at the same receiving location.

But for a ground loop transmitting antenna at 970 Hz I wonder if anyone knows which field (E or B) and which polarization (theta and phi) predominates at a receiving antenna near the ground at 0.18 wavelengths distance. A very interesting topic and perhaps your E-field (monopole) and B field (loop) receiving antennas have provided another milestone in this respect: perhaps a first documented data point for E vs. B at any polarization, near 0.18 wavelengths (an interesting distance on its own) from a ground-loop transmitting antenna at 970 Hz?

 

Another fascinating realm now opened, much appreciated.

73,

Jim AA5BW

 

 

*(noise characteristics including noise E strength vs. B strength vs. noise polarization vs. distance from noise source vs noise-source-type could be interesting at 970Hz)

 

 

 

 

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of DK7FC
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2018 5:00 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: ULF: The next experiment on 970 Hz - Cracked the far field border below 1 kHz

 

Hi ULF,

Today i run a carrier transmission on 970.01 Hz. Start time was 08:05 UTC. The carrier run for 3 hours without an interruption. I got 1.9 A antenna current on my ground loop antenna, about 320 W DC input to the PA.
The signal was received on my 3-axis RX on the tree in JN49IK. The distance was, as usual, 55.6 km.

So far the results were disappointing. I expected a strong SNR (at least 10 dB in 424 uHz) from the new E field antenna which seems to perform very well in the complete ULF range. However the analysis of a two hour segment of the carrier showed an SNR of 6 dB, i.e. just noise. However, as i routinely calculated the SNR from the N-S loop i got a surprising SNR of 13.03 dB in 139.5 uHz.
At about 08:40 UTC the reception on the tree was disturbed by its own solar charger, just for a few seconds but that was enough to create a bright vertical line in the 424 uHz spectrogram showing the E field.

Anyway, i just analysed the full 3 hour segment, only from the N-S loop (which actually points rather to 30/210 deg) and got the following result (including processing command line):
vtread -T2018-09-29_08:05,+3h /raw | vtcat -p | vtmix -c0,1,0 | vtfilter -a th=6 -h lp,f=1500,poles=8 | vtblank -a27 -d0.0005 -t100 | vtmult -f970.01 | vtresample -r240 | vtresample -r1 | vtraw -oa | ebnaut -dp8K19A -r1 -c2 -v -f15 -f16 -M'***' -N3 -k20 -S24
carrier phase: -111.2
carrier Eb/N0: 1.9 dB
carrier S/N: 14.25 dB in 93.0 uHz, -26.07 dB in 1Hz, -60.05 dB in 2.5kHz


This is the first far field detection of a 970 Hz signal generated by amateurs on the 309 km band! A true milestone for me. Since more than a year it was my goal to cross that far field border on that band. :-) The efforts were immense.
The result is just preliminary. I want to tweak the parameters for a higher SNR and try to filter out the short QRM from the charger.

So now, why does the E field produce such bad results? At http://www.iup.uni-heidelberg.de/schaefer_vlf/ULF/ULFSLFELF.png you can see what it receives in the range of interest. The day/night QRN difference is higher than on the loops, so the loops seemed to be rather deaf. Does it maybe mean a steep reflexion on the ionosphere, so that the E field antenna doesn't see it, but the loops do?

Later i've done a DC measurement and got 1 A at 86.5 V, quite much this time. Maybe a bad contact somewhere. Will check that.

My 120 Ah LiFePo4 accu is fully recharged and i plan to do a new experiment on monday morning, 3 hours before my solar charger starts to work :-) The SNR seems to be promising, i plan to send a 5 character EbNaut message.

More results and a spectrum peak image will follow.

73, Stefan

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