Would a station in northern England be any use?

[Andrew.Instone-Cowie]

My station is about 60km south of the Inskip 81kHz transmitter, and I get a very clear noise peak at that frequency. My H-field antennae are aligned roughly N-S and E-W (not for any technical reason, other than that the corner of house is so aligned!), and I have noticed that the gain I can manage on the N-S axis is consistently quite a lot lower than E-W, and I had always assumed that that was due to the big peak from the transmitter. However the transmitter was turned off for couple of weeks in August and although the spike disappeared my gains didn't improve, so I guess it's not that after all! I'm about 3km north of Fiddlers Ferry Power Station (2 GigaWatts), and I'm wondering whether that may be to blame.

I still get quite reasonable results in a suburban location though, your location should be useful. Farm electric fence controllers can sometimes be an issue in rural areas.

Andrew

[G3WGV]

Thanks for that Andrew. I'm getting the materials together to build a coax loop (or perhaps just a wire one, haven't decided yet which is best?) and will take a look at what it picks up on my 'scope. Did you consider trying to get rid of the 81kHz signal with a series tuned circuit (notch)? Perhaps it doesn't matter, as the signal is not a broad-band pulse and I would imagine the controller has some sort of algorithm to reject non-pulse signals. Of course the VLF transmission might be strong enough to block the amplifier, forcing a gain reduction.

We do have electric fences around here occasionally. I hear their regular "transmissions" on the LF bands on my amateur radio station and they are very sharp spikes - easily eradicated with the noise blanker, unlike lightning.

[jrnokes]

Hello John and welcome.

There are no restriction for installing a station. If you want to then, just bought the kit (when available).
You should know that the more stations are installed the best is the coverage.

If I was at your place, I would definetly set up a station there.

Btw, you can check coverage at http://www.lightningmaps.org/extra/cover...%5D=1#cmap (but don't know if it is updated).

Hey guys,

I am interested as well, and I don't think there are receivers very close to me:  Latitude
29.210193 (29° 12' 36'' N)
Longitude
-98.314184 (98° 18' 51'' W)
Please let me know when I can buy a kit...

Thanks
jerry
wy8s
jrnokes@gmail.com