Tuned Sound Amplifier/Receiver for the VLF Christmas Eve transmission from SAQ, Grimeton, Sweden

I reprocessed the SAQ Grimeton Christmas Message this morning at the more standard Morse tone of 750 HZ.

The processed file "Grimeton SAQ Xmas Message 24th December 2023 750Hz.wav" is in mono at 8000 samples per second.

During the processing I realised that the Morse code can be seen in the raw data.


Figure 1.png
 

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There is a very faint CW at exactly 17000 Hz that is modulated and looks a bit like Morse code ????

So I expanded it as following image:-

Signal at 17000 Hz.png


Also noticed the small variations in the SAQ CW frequency whereas others (crystal or atomic clock controlled) do not vary. Also noticed that the SAQ CW never completely turns off, its still there between dots and dashes. They told us this happens in the explanation.

cc @fowlay
 
To extend the upper limit a faster transistor like 2n2369 looks promising in simulation. But I would not trust simulation in the upper region as the frequency dependency of ferrite core permeability is not modeled at all.
There are many types of ferrite material, some for lower frequency some for very high frequency. For example 3F4 a very commonly used ferrite material is quite happy over 2 MHz. See datasheet attached.
 

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I think these two antennas are combined to allow operation without adjusting the direction of antennas by elimination of the the minimum.
Good. I suspected the extra antenna was non-functional and just for looks. I ordered a simpler unit which outputs pulses for decoding. WWVB varies power 17db and also does phase-shift keying. I am on the northern edge of it's coverage except at 0600utc. It may be received in France at that time. I am interested in the 60khz signal quality, I don't need to decode it. If I can receive it I will have a reference. And it probable that VLF will work as well.
 
@Aridace I read the paper on noise reducing MW antennas. It is very interesting - everything is symmetric and transformer coupled. The website is amazing a lot of work.

There is a paper about Common Mode Filters written by Siemens, maybe these types of filters might help antenna noise. Its just that a lot of problems in audio and electronics in general are unwanted common mode signals .

Common Mode Filter.png
 

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The effect of common mode filters depends on the impedances involved. With bad ground here (between 2m ground rods spaced 2m there's 140 (!) ohm) even 1k impedance (at 100 KHz) of the common mode filter wasn't enough. Hence the S/N improvement by fully symmetrical loop antennas and close to SWR= 1 feedline.
 
I’m not an RF guy, but…
I see a lot of parallel resonant circuits here for receivers, would there be any benefit in having a series resonant circuit and feeding it into a virtual earth on an op-amp? i.e. a short circuit at these VLF frequencies

Brian
 
The first .wav file attached to #342 is SAQ reprocessed. The second file from a CW at 17000 Hz attached to #344 is not SAQ. It is just very close by and I'm interested to know what it is.
17000 is not listed in the https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/Signal_Identification_Guide
There is an associated Discord server where people discuss signals. Perhaps you can inquire there

When you identify 17000 you can email your findings to the wiki admin

Is 17000 still active or does it just shadow 17200