SAQ transmission 24th December 2024

[rich.g.williams]

I will complete the QSL form for this morning’s transmission later, just wanted to leave a few notes on the forum. My location is Cardiff (West side) Wales UK. Today I decided to try the antenna configuration discussed elsewhere on this forum by Jean Marie F5VLB and in my instance it was two earth rods 25m apart aligned on a line pointing to SAQ.

The signal from the earth rods was passed through the primary of an isolating ferrite transformer, the secondary signal amplified slightly and fed into Laptop sound input, signal being recorded and processed by Audacity.

It’s difficult to put a meaningful dB figure to the signal but the signal was strong. Plenty of wideband noise also, that I assume is from lightning storms etc. The noise was never strong enough to mask the signal so I was able to read every character with confidence and the message is exactly as given on the YouTube video with one exception – the preamble to the message that I received with 100% certainty was as follows ……CQ CQ CQ DE SAQ SAQ SAQ = THIS IS GRIMETON RADIO…….

The dual earth rod antenna worked well.

Ämne

[rich.g.williams]

Hello Paul S.

Not for me to reply and most likely you have far more radio experience than I. That said I thought I would share my options on basis of our shared enthusiasm for SAQ.

I would be surprised if there was no signal to be received at your location, my fairly brief experiences receiving SAQ with a few different antenna types is that the very narrow band 17.2kHz signal seems to get everywhere, it’s just about how much noise is masking it. The best antenna type seems to be a very big loop in a vertical plane pointing to SAQ, it picks up the horizontal magnetic field. I set a very narrow band filter centered around 17.2kHz that is about 50Hz wide. I have also experimented with tuning the loop (parallel capacitor) to peak at 17.2kHz and the combination of analogue and digital filtering seems to help.

Then I shift the pitch down to typically 760 Hz to make SAQ audible.

Best wishes and Merry Christmas

Richard

[pa3wt@veron.nl]

This morning I listened to the Christmas broadcast on 17.2 kHz, the signal was very strong and clear.
Receiver Kenwood ts 480 SAt no amplifier home-made transverter 10 kHz to 100 kHz input output 10.010 to 10.100 MHz.
Antenna miniwhip about 3 meters above the ground
band with 50 Hz.
signal 5/9/9
73′ WIm PA3WT

[Paul S.]

I live in the midwestern USA, and had the chance to hear your 17.2 kHz signal through the Twente SDR. Tuning in to other SDR’s, I was not able to get a signal from you. What is the furthest distance SAQ has been received directly on 17.2?

Over the summer, my YL and myself traveled to Denmark (Copenhagen), Norway (Oslo, Mysen, Bergen, Tromso), and Sweden (Stockholm, Malmo). We had a great time everywhere we went on our trip!

73 and Merry Christmas.

[Författare]

Svar