K1 K2 - Interesting noise
Locked
 
|
Rich, NU6T, and I activated Leviathan Peak [SOTA W6/SN-039] on 26 Jun
and did a 2B Battery FD entry too. His K1, my K2. On both radios, we heard a "whoosh whoosh ..." sound in the headphones, sort of like the sound in the movie "Contact" sending prime numbers, although these did not come in primes [I counted]. It varied in intensity, in frequency of the "whooshing," and AF gains had no effect, although turning off the radio ended it. Sometimes it quit altogether only to come back. K1 was on 20, K2 on 15. The frequency was slow enough that we could count the whooshes [hmmm ... T-bird spell check tells me that's actually a real word :-)]. Turning off the other radio had no effect. The noise is gone back home. There are quite a few radios on the peak all powered by a very large solar array. Judging by the antennas, they range from high band VHF into microwaves. We were on the ground adjacent to the tower, in front of a concrete block vault topped by an abandoned fire lookout. I had my KX1, but didn't think to check it. We're figuring that something up there was irradiating the radios strongly enough after the AF gain control to cause this, we have no idea what. If so, it was irradiating us too, although neither of us glow in the dark, which we're taking as a good sign. A real puzzle. 73, Fred K6DGW - Northern California Contest Club - CU in the 2011 Cal QSO Party 1-2 Oct 2011 - www.cqp.org ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
|
|
On 7/2/2011 9:22 AM, Fred Jensen wrote:
> We're figuring that something up there was irradiating the radios > strongly enough after the AF gain control to cause this, we have > no idea what. If so, it was irradiating us too, although neither > of us glow in the dark, which we're taking as a good sign. A > real puzzle. How close and exposed was the rig to a medium or high power radar installation? Sounds like that (audio rectification). That was a problem with the air defense radar at Almaden Air Force Station (Mt. Umunhum, south of San Francisco) being rectified in all the home stereo systems in what is now called "Silicon Valley" until that radar was replaced by PavePaws at Beale AFB. -- 73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane Elecraft K2/100 s/n 5402 ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
|
|
CONTENTS DELETED
The author has deleted this message.
|
|
|
In reply to this post by Phil Kane-2
On 7/2/2011 1:50 PM, Phil Kane wrote:
> How close and exposed was the rig to a medium or high power > radar installation? Sounds like that (audio rectification). None remotely close. When it was still McClellan AFB, there was a shop in the corner which repaired mobile tactical radar equipment. Interstate 80 went over an overpass over the Union Pacific tracks there, and got just high enough to put my hearing aids into the bottom of the beam as I commuted to work. It's an unmistakable sound, not what we were hearing. You do trigger a possibility however. I used to use my K2 for RTTY and had a problem with some sort of cross-coupling between the CAT cable and the audio to/from the computer and my headphones. It sounded a lot like what we heard on Leviathan, and appeared to be N1MM polling the radio. It too sort of came and went some, and did not interfere with RTTY transmission or reception, just annoying in the cans. I'm wondering if there is some connection to one or more data systems in the vault. The solar array is very large, possibly the noise was associated with the charge controllers. At any rate, I don't glow in the dark and Rich would have said something if he did, and the pulses we heard were not a series of prime numbers [alas, not ET, little, green or otherwise]. Our K1/K2's are fine. > until that radar was replaced by PavePaws at Beale AFB. About 20 mi from me. The radar feeds 520 peak watts each [individual PA's] to 1,760 antenna elements in a phased array antenna with about 37 dBi gain in the 70cm band. That's about 900 KW peak "real watts," and about 4.5 GW EIRP. Those of us with 70cm repeater systems have had to take some draconian measures to comply with the USAF requests to lower our power at the radar. At 4,586 megawatts EIRP, how come I've never heard it? [That's a rhetorical question. It's just mildly strange that we don't hear it] 73, Fred K6DGW - Northern California Contest Club - CU in the 2011 Cal QSO Party 1-2 Oct 2011 - www.cqp.org ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
|
|
In reply to this post by AC7AC
On 7/2/2011 2:48 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
> There was general relief all over the area when the huge antenna > disappeared from the mountain. The FPS-24 long-range Air Defense search radar antenna was huge, all right. and it operated in the 214-236 MHz range wiping out TV Channel 13 (Sacramento) reception and 220 MHz band operation in the SF Bay area. One didn't realize how big it was until one was at the site. Then there was the FPS-90 (affectionately called the "Tipsy One D" after an earlier model), an S-Band height finder radar, which nodded in a vertical plane while being slaved to a bearing in the horizontal plane corresponding to a target in the search radar. The hidden "gem" on that hill was the UHF (300 MHz band) multi-KW ground-to-air data link, with a final tube the size of a wastebasket. General Electric made a fortune on that system. This was all tied into the Air Defense Command SAGE system (of not-so-blessed memory) and I was given the "nickel tour" there in the late 1970s shortly before it was decommissioned. Lest I be accused of "disclosing national secrets", this is all written up in Wikipedia articles, as has most of the hush-hush projects that I worked on during the Cold War. Start with "Almaden Air Force Station". > Little did I, or anyone, realize at that time that we were about > to be invaded by millions of noise switching "wall warts" and > other digital noise generators. Quieting Umunhum's noise was > child's play compared to dealing with them. The functions of that system were moved to the PavePaws system, and those of us using the 70 cm band in the San Francisco - Sacramento area became well aware of that system when we were ordered by the FCC at the behest of the USAF to lower 440 MHz repeater powers, in some cases to single-digit watts, to avoid interfering with PavePaws. Many repeaters just went off the air. Back to Elecraft....yes, the wall-warts come in two flavors - those that are "clean" and those which I send to the recycling bin. -- 73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane Elecraft K2/100 s/n 5402 ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
|
|
In reply to this post by k6dgw
On 7/2/2011 3:23 PM, Fred Jensen wrote:
> At 4,586 megawatts EIRP, how come I've never > heard it? > > [That's a rhetorical question. It's just mildly strange that we don't > hear it] The per-channel dwell time is shorter than the squelch reaction time, and they try to avoid operating in the ham band whenever they think about it. Or so I was told... :-) The AF and its contractor has been very silent on the actual system capabilities and susceptibility, even when we needed that info in the "repeater power reduction" project. It's been "I'll tell you when it's OK", to use an old hackneyed phrase. -- 73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane Elecraft K2/100 s/n 5402 From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[hidden email] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html |
«
Return to Elecraft
|
1 view|%1 views
| Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |