AMRAD LF Receiver Page
Receivers can be:
- Commercially
available units covering LF. Sandy, WB5MMB, talked Andre', N4ICK out of
his RBA-1, built for the US Navy in 1942. It weighs a mere 95 lbs. This
RBA-1 was able to hear the transmission from SAQ, Grimeton Sweden. It
really proved it is still a performer.
- Some
Icom and Kenwood receivers also cover down to 100 Khz.
- Commercial
receivers. Two members have Cubic R-3030 receivers and they perform
superbly on LF and VLF.
- Short
wave receivers preceded by a converter, which upconverts the LF band to a
SW band.
- Designed
from scratch, especially for the job. AMRAD is looking at designing one
now.
- Modified
commercial short wave receivers such as the TenTec RX-320.
- Regardless
of the receiver, the noise at LF can be a problem. An LF noise blanker can
be a real asset.
UpConverter
- An
upconverter converts the LF band up to the HF range so a high performance
HF receiver that does not receive LF can be used to receive LF.
- AMRAD
has an upconverter design that was published in the April 2002 QSt.
Performance is really good. Grab this QST and check it out.
TenTec RX-320
- Modification
has proved simple and effective by AMRAD making high performance available
to those interested in trying LF.
- Information
on our modification is provided here.
CUBIC R-3030/R3080
- Several
AMRAD members were fortunate to have obtained surplus Cubic R-3030
receivers.
- This
receiver goes down to 5 kHz and works really well on VLF and LF. If you
run across one at a hamfest, by all means, take a hard look at it.
- We
have obtained permission of Cubic to put the whole manual up for download.
It is a great lesson in modern receiver design and look at the details on
how they make it work on VLF and LF. The manual file is Acrobat and is
almost 6 megs in size. Download here.
Rycom
2171/R1307A
- Several other AMRAD members
have obtained the vacuum tube selective voltmeter made by Rycom and have
had good results.
- The manual can be downloaded
and you can see if it fits your version.
Download here.
LF Noise Blanker
- Andre'
Kesteloot, N4ICK has built a noise blanker that works well against AC
power line noise.
- A
challenge to LF amateurs is working in the presence of thunderstorm
static. We call this sferics.
- AMRAD
is developing a noise blanker that works against both AC power line noise
and sferics. We hope to have a working prototype soon that can be built by
others. Stay tuned.