SAQ 100th anniversary broadcast

M0RVB

Good copy of SAQ here this morning during their 100th annoversary broadcast at 09:00 UTC. The reception was via a YouLoop in the loft angled towards SAQ, an Airspy HF+ connected to the Mac via USB, and SDRpp on the Mac.

The first picture is a screenshot with SAQ featuring, the display shifted and zoomed such that the 'loud' stations further up the band are out of the way. SDRpp has AGC turned off, bandwidth set to 200Hz and no attenuation. The morse was perfecly readable by ear.

A screenshot of the reception of SAQ on 2nd July 2025

This second screenshot has the loud stations on screen as well as a comparison.

A screenshot of SAQ with louder stations visible as well

There was a secod broadcast in the afternoon, with equally good reception but slightly more difficult on the ear.

A screenshot of an SAQ broadcast along with some stronger signals

 

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Getting ready for the December SAQ broadcast

I am making a better effort at picking up the SAQ broadcast due on the 1st of December. I now have a VLF mini whip (no idea where it came from now!) up in the loft fed via a bias-tee and connected to a Heros VLF converter which takes 0 to 500kHz and converts it to 4,000 to 4,500kHz. Although the loft is a poor location for this it is a lot better than in the shack. the Heros is connected to an RSPdx on it's BNC port and this is connected to the Linux PC which runs SDRconnect as a server. Reception is via SDRconnect on the Mac. So far, so good, I can see the MSF and DCF77 time signals on 60kHz and 70.5kHz respectively plus a ferw other peaks, at least some of which correspond with known transmitters. Getting the settings right is a fiddle. The above photo has the base set low and the red line is where SAQ should be. But there is quite a rolloff there so hopefully the signal will be sufficiently strong to receive. The antenna is supposed to work down to 5kHz and the Heros is specified as <5 to 500kHz.

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