Low Band experimenters

[N8YX]

Any Islanders playing with the new sub-500KHz allotments - either purely receiving, or also transceiving?

Gear? Antennas used?

[KD8TUT]

Just receiving here.

I've decoded some digital. Hasn't really lit a fire under my behind. But my radio is capable of transmitting at those frequencies.

[KG4CGC]

Old Rycom voltmeter and a 460' wire.
What freqs?

[N8YX]

472 and 136-139KHz, I think?

I have a couple Mackay Marine 303x-series receivers and some lab-grade audio processing plugins for my Tektronix TM units. Thinking about throwing together something that's capable of monitoring the activity and effectively eliminating QRN/digging the weak signals out.

[WZ7U]

I have the "authorization" but that is as far as its gone.

[PA5COR]

My FT 2000-D goes to 30 KHz and the homebrew active probe antenna does well there.

[KG4CGC]

Ah, I'll have to find something else to cover 472 kHz. The 2174A covers .3 kHz to 400 kHz.

[HUGH]

The monitoring sites WSPRnet.org/drupal/node and pskreporter.info/pskmap.html should show anyone on 136khz and 472khz if you select those bands, they may be listed as LF and MF. The latter site doesn't seem to be working properly though, even though it should give results for several formats, and WSPR only shows users with that system.

There are some budget-priced SDR receivers, I have an SDRplay but my favourite is the Kenwood R5000. I think the more wire the better for an antenna but there are quite a few compact whips and ferrite-base antennas in favour.