According to their facebook site they have had 60 reports. Would be interesting to find out the details.

One VLF snippet from about 25 years ago: I was living in Carlisle at the time and was visiting the local radio emporium when he received a call from a certain VLF station about 13 miles away asking if he could fire up his VLF receiver and check if they were putting out a signal! Apparently the comment was they were pumping umpteen kW into the aerial system but didn't know if it was actually radiating!!!


Andy

Hi Andy

I listened out for the transmission, but nothing heard on my trusty Software Defined Radio a RFSpace SDR-IQ which gives excellent results when Grimeton Radio transmit on 17.2 kHz two or three times each year. It will operate from 500 Hz or so up to 30 MHz.


The balloon transmission did not appear to have its frequency tightly controlled enough for those with the know-how and equipment (not me) who with extremely narrow bandwidths and receivers using GPS controlled frequency standards can extract a signal from out of the noise. Certainly my SDR-IQ on its waterfall graphical display can show signals that I cannot distinguish out of the background noise - one being the Russian time signal from near Moscow on 66.666 recurring kHz or 200/3 kHz as often described.


I watched the launch and was rather concerned when the aerial caught a nearby mast. Reading their Facebook page, they actually lost not only part of the VLF aerial but also the 70 cm (430 MHz) band transmitter. Not good.


Re your VLF snippet of 25 years ago. That would have been the NATO radio station at Anthorn GQD on 19.0 kHz.  Following the closure of the UK VLF stations at Rugby on originally 16 kHz CW Morse call sign GBR and latter on 15.975 kHz MSK and Criggion GB(located between Oswestry and Welshpool on the A483) on 19.6 kHz Morse and latter on 19.575 kHz MSK   both operated by BT for the UK Navy, Anthorn returned as GBZ on Criggion's old frequency of 19.6 kHz and call sign of GBZ (not sure about any MSK frequency offset) and Rugby's GBR became GZQ transmitting on 22.1 kHz from Skelton using a top loaded vertical aerial (like an umbrella).


These days with a simple freeware program, you can use a lap-top as a receiver with a piece of wire into the microphone socket for up to about 22 kHz.


Cheers!

Clive