The Lualualei Very Low Frequency Transmitter near Honolulu

Lualualei VLF transmitter site is located about 45 minutes west of Honolulu, and the giant antenna masts are easily visible at a distance when exploring that area. You can easily drive to the perimeter of the military base and get close-up view of the antennas through the fence and see not only the VLF equipment, but also HF antennas and satellite domes.
In the video we look at some of the interesting items that are easily visible, and also do simple experiment so show salt water prevents communications with submarines at typical radio frequencies because of the skin depth effect that confines electrical activity to near the surface of a conductor. We also briefly looks at HF or shortwave communications.
There is some great information about the site here: www.navy-radio... and also some information in Wikipedia here en.wikipedia.o... .
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[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Looks like I goofed! The antenna on the Missouri is not an umbrella. Here is some great info from @jeffreyyoung4104 (Thanks so much Jeffrey!): The bow antenna on the Missouri is actually two antennas in one, First, it is a conical monopole, then a discone. It can operate from 10 to 30 MHz on the discone, and from 6 to 10 MHz on the monopole. It is the primary antenna of the Amateur radio station KH6BB aboard the Missouri. There are also wire dipole antennas aboard the ship that allow the Amateur radio station to operate 160, 80 and 40 meters on the fundamental frequency, as well as many other bands on the odd harmonic frequencies. The Surface ships would not use VLF frequencies, as that was reserved for the submarines, and the surface ships didn't have to worry about radio waves not penetrating water.

[@Speed-Daemon-123]

Well, the antenna shown on USS Missouri isn't really a discone either. Yes, it has the "disc" part on top, but the bottom forms _two_ cones of different dimensions. A regular discone has just the disc and one cone. An umbrella antenna OTOH uses the radials as a sort of capacitive hat. Personally, I always looked at discone antennas as ground planes flipped upside-down.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@@Speed-Daemon-123 "I always looked at discone antennas as ground planes flipped upside-down." Me too. I just looked at some other photos of the ship antenna - the insulators are at the lower part of the bottom inverted umbrella at there is a wire connection each of the umbrella wires to an insulated feed trough to it must be driven from there. I cant tell if the umbrella wires at the top are insulation or attached to the metal mast. Now I am really intrigued at to what it is!

[@jeffreyyoung4104]

The bow antenna on the Missouri is actually two antennas in one, First, it is a conical monopole, then a discone. It can operate from 10 to 30 MHz on the discone, and from 6 to 10 MHz on the monopole. It is the primary antenna of the Amateur radio station KH6BB aboard the Missouri. There are also wire dipole antennas aboard the ship that allow the Amateur radio station to operate 160, 80 and 40 meters on the fundamental frequency, as well as many other bands on the odd harmonic frequencies. The Surface ships would not use VLF frequencies, as that was reserved for the submarines, and the surface ships didn't have to worry about radio waves not penetrating water.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@@jeffreyyoung4104 Thank you so much for solving the mystery! I will copy your comment to the pinned comment about it!

[@jeffreyyoung4104]

@@ElectromagneticVideos Thank you! As an added bonus, the VLF antennas with the top guy wires as part of the antenna array, by using the wires as a capacity hat, it allows the antennas to be shorter than full height! Otherwise, the antennas would be much taller.

[@xxmrrickxx]

Something you may find interesting is the VLF antenna deployed by the E-6B doomsday aircraft. It has a 5 mile spool of wire that gets deployed from the rear as it flys in a figure 8 pattern. It’s super fascinating.

[@SocialistDistancing]

If I'm not mistaken, submarines also deploy a long wire behind the sub for comms.

[@russellhltn1396]

Way back when, I visited an Omega station when it was operating. You didn't need any equipment to hear the signal. It was in the air around you. Miles away, you just needed an amplifier as the signal would get into anything that had poor shielding.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

I had to look up Omega station - really in the audio range. It must have been a real nuisance for anyone living nearby. I do remember a TV report many many years ago about people living near a powerful AM transmitter who could receive the radio station by carefully balancing a cooking pot cover on the heating element of an electric stove. I'm guessing the oxide on the element made for a primitive diode and there was enough current to generate significant magnetic fields. I cant imagine regulations today allowing people to live in such high continuous RF fields.

[@RCAvhstape]

Wow, Omega, now that's a name I haven't heard since...the 90s when I worked for a company that was designing drones and looking at various navigation systems besides GPS.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@@RCAvhstape Wow - that must have bee such cutting edge technology back then!

[@RCAvhstape]

@@ElectromagneticVideos GPS was new, but Omega goes back a ways IIRC.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@@RCAvhstape I do remember the early days of GPS with "selective availability". Was playing with an early GPS receiver that we were using for time acquisition and I think we had it on a picnic table. Suddenly the table was moving if you believed the latitude and longitude :)

[@RandomerFellow]

Interesting! Grimeton in Sweden is a preserved VLF site worth visiting.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Actually thats on my bucket list! Looks like its a fantastically preserved site with an Alexanderson alternator - one of the fist ways of making a nice strong but clean RF signal. I gather they occasionally transmit LF from the site - I would really like to visit when they do and bring something like a SDR to receive the signal when I am there. For anyone reading this who has not heard of Ernst Alexanderson, he was one of he great radio pioneers and was from Sweden, so its wonderful that the Grimeton site is preserved in his native country,

[@WOFFY-qc9te]

RandomerFellow. Good spot, it is a wonderful machine I listened for the Morse 100th birthday transmissions but it was weak on my poor antenna. For those in the comments look up " Alexander SAQ Grimeton Friendship Association ' and see the monster transmitting on 17.2 kHz

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@ So cool that you were able to receive transmissions from what I presume was the Alexanderson alternator! 17.2Khz - thats so low a frequency it well into the the range of human hearing. For some reason RF signals at frequencies we could hear if connected to headphones just fascinates me (well OK - I probably couldn't hear 17.2Khz now, but I'll bet when I was a kid I could :)

[@WOFFY-qc9te]

​@ It sounds so strange when you say it that way forgetting it is RF not acoustic although I am surprised there is not more parasitic acoustic energy within the transmitter building although the high pressure air used to quench any arc on the antenna relays would drown that out. Anyway I had to check 17.2kHz correct as the last time I went ELF /VLF was 1980 ha ha. Here is the Wiki [ The station started operation in 1924, transmitting radiotelegraphy traffic with the callsign SAQ on a wavelength of about 18,000 metres (16.7 kHz),[4] later changed to 17,442 metres (17.2 kHz),[5] to RCA's Radio Central receivers on Long Island, New York. It immediately took over 95% of the Swedish telegram traffic to the United States. ] My old valve receivers are mothballed somewhere and I used an SDR with a down converter but not successfully as my antenna are rather poor. They had the 100th birthday 2024 and I cheated taking the live stream. UK has a few VLF still in service Inskip 61khz Marine, Rattray 52 kHz Defence And GVT 33.2kZ 1,200 foot tower and a few others (according Wiki). I must get back into my Ham shack. It is strange that so much power is transmitted at a frequency we should hear yet cant ?. Your reference to Skin effect, Foyers Hydro power station takes the power up from the turbines to the Switch room and transformers via huge aluminium tubes taking advantage of ski effect. it has been a few years but I think they were six foot in diameter.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@ I'll bet when those high power places transmit at "audio frequencies" you would be able to hear it - assuming it was safe to be close to the equipment. The Lualualei station seemed to have power levels between 100kw and 1mw so I'm not sure one would want to be too close to it! I do remember in the old days I could hear when a CRT TV was on from the almost 15Khz horizontal retrace oscillator - probably from the magnetostrictive effect in the flyback transformer (thats line transformer to you!) and the core in the deflection yolk. I cant imagine there would not be various things causing high freq audio or ultrasonic vibration. It would drive dogs crazy I'm sure. Interestingly there are houses just outside the fence surrounding the VLF array. I cant imagine that with 1Mw being transmitted, things like wiring in the house - or nearby power lines - is not picking up some of the energy. I wonder if things like electronics mysteriously fail in those houses. 6 foot tubes in a power station - that would be fascinating to see. I sort of recall that for 60Hz the skin depth is 8mm in copper, for Al maybe a few cm. Makes sense they would use tubes. Smaller tubes are routinely use for RF where the skin depths are often tiny.

[@Dennis-uc2gm]

These signals are detectable with most SDR receivers. Here in the Midwest I can receive all 3 stations stations on the mainland rather strong with just a mini whip active antenna.

[@sondrayork6317]

In ham radio, it’s called HF radio because the frequency range is in the high frequency range from about 2 MHz to about 29.9990 MHz

[@LarsLarsen77]

When I quit a sysadmin job where I had been on call 24/7 I threw my cell phone into a bucket of water. To my horror, it rang at the bottom of the bucket.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Interesting! The water must have been pretty pure with little dissolved salts or acid to make it conductive and have a thin skin depth. In the early days of cell phones, lower frequencies like 800Mhz where also common, so maybe that help. So here is my advice - next time ass some salt :) Actually really impressive that the phone didnt short!

[@WOFFY-qc9te]

My mates pager did the same when I dropped it in a pint of IPA to get some peace.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@ Pager! That must have been a while ago!

[@WOFFY-qc9te]

@@ElectromagneticVideos Yep and he hasn't forgotten. A radio was dropped overboard from the Francis Drake, we managed to net it and I cleaned it with distilled water. The battery had separated so good chance when dry it would work, it did. Pager in beer not so sure must be 1995 ish. Check out Porthcurno

[@bertholtappels1081]

Very cool, my spouse and I went to visit the VLF station in Cutler, Maine. We marveled at it from multiple angles. It’s so enormous that even if you can just get up to the fence perimeter, you can get to see quite a lot of cool things like shown in your video.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

I just looked up the VLF station in Cutler. The antennas there look way more elaborate - must have wonderful to see! If I'm ever near that area I would sure make a detour to see it. Was the ground there anything like salt Marsh? That sort of terrain is great for antennas systems like that - the saltwater makes a great ground plain. Not to far north from there near Amherst, NS, was the shortwave transmitter side for Radio Canada - the international service of the CBC. I drove by it once before we all had cameras in our phones. It was located in a salt Marsh with a magnificent array of HF antennas. Not sure if there is anything left of it since CBC shut down shortwave broadcasting.

[@bertholtappels1081]

@@ElectromagneticVideos Actually, the station is perched on a tiny peninsula (relative to wavelength) and is effectively built IN the Gulf of Maine and by extension the Atlantic Ocean. So yeah, I envy their site a little :)

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@@bertholtappels1081 That sounds like the perfect location with the ocean as a ground plane!

[@timmack2415]

It's very cool that you went, and even cooler your xyl went with you. If I were to tell her, " let's go up to Maine to look at antennas" I cannot adequately explain what her reaction would be. Heck, she's still angry about the 100' tower I put up, and I completed it 12 years ago.

[@lawabidingcitizen5153]

Thanks for sharing, really love this old style of video with no fluff!

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Well thank you! The no fluff partly is because I am the producer, director, cameraman, audio engineer, writer, on air talent, editor, and graphic artist :) SO not much skill in most of those things! I do try and make the videos as understandable as possible without fluff or jargon, or needing a lot of technical background.

[@ThriftyToolShed]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Thanks!!

[@MADmosche]

Neat, thanks for sharing! I always wondered what the antennas look like for comms to military submarines. “Conn, Radio. We have incoming EAM, recommend Alert One!”

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Glad you found it interesting. If you do a bit of googling. some of the other VLF stations have more elaborate arrays. ELF - frequencies in the 10s of Hz use things like miles of cable on power poles as the antenna. If this links works - here is a ELF station: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mYHbioyte85-Zs0si=1otn9oS6HNQM_XRW&t=869

[@adamsonofdon2766]

Outside of Arlington, Washington in the foothills is another Navy array for the same communications

[@jaymzx0]

Jim Creek!

[@dobcast6009]

thank you for the vid :) super cool!

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Well thank you - really appreciate that!

[@The_Conspiracy_Analyst]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="116">1:56</a> hmmm....looks more like a Discone antenna

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

You know - I think your right! I never noticed the top bit. My bad! Interesting to compare - a very similar sort of geometry

[@WOFFY-qc9te]

VLF, what an iteresting video, That is a well maintained array rather tricky to tune. I played with VLf and ELF in the late 70's when I live next to the sea, I had a Ex Navy hydrophone and I think it was a Murphy or Racal Rx narrow band tuning with huge tuning coils. Listening for subs coming down from Faslane but not much success. Loads of noise from propeller cavitation in the Mersey. Early hours I was sitting on the sea wall and a Policman stoped and sat down next to me, he asked " is every thing alright lad " (i think he thought I was about to jump in the sea or something) yes fine I am listening for submarines ! a long pause then I realised that was a difficult thing for a policman to understand without context so pointed to the coax leading to the house. " Oh right..... have you caught any ". Years later and a Navy chap I found out a few more details (need to know and I didn't) of the tech and the energy needed for acoustic and ELF comms. .... I pitty the beasties in the sea or a diver near a "Ping". Interesting experiment, the effect on the received signal level was immediate with only a small amount of salt. Still getting my head around the AI stuff and found an interesting report from " Dave's Garage " about Deepseek and some code linking it to Open AI. Dave is a former Microsoft development engineer and presents some helpful insights to Windows legacy systems. Best

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Wow - I'm envious that you did that! What a accomplishment back then with internet to find out all the details from - I remember hard it was to get info like that. Interesting about Deepseek linking to Open AI. I had read that Deepseek used Open AI to train, but not while in operation. If it needs Open AI to run - gee - is it a scam? I havnt seen that video. I do sometimes watch Dave's videos although lately have been distracted by all the videos on the US-Canada trade war which has a (temporary?) ceasfire.

[@WOFFY-qc9te]

​@@ElectromagneticVideos Deepseek,,, have a look at Daves recent video, I must admit my logic set has a problem getting a grip on and thing not tangible which on our world is anything doing with Applications... The Chinese say they did it for $5m So they set up servers UPS networks routers traffic management comms lines and programmers etc etc.. Nope. Unless the CCP have bankrolled it under research ...... I would not touch it or any Chinese data processing with a barge pole. It is a back door in our systems. I am not sure which agency it was but it was one of the US three lettered ones. Apparently a building near to the Agency had a baby monitor or doorbell something like that. When it contacted the mother ship in China it looked for the strongest signal and that was the Agency router with a quest access ! So when China security police found this they then broke through the agencies pathetic defence and accessed the agency network. Huawei was found to have unidentified programming and insisted that the system was not accessible but would not disclose what the programming was for. The UK government had all Huawei kit removed form the 5G network. Dave Evblog did a tare-down of some Huawei kit and it had rather sophisticated architecture. China insider has some interesting info on what they are up to, I take my data in from several sources and from what I see they play the long game using our own systems and laws against us. In the Universities the ration of Chinese students to all others in disproportionate. What is interesting they pay more ! . Where does a Chinese student get this money for fees, accommodation air fares, from the CCP. in return for access to resources like university computers, PHD papers research being done. One students car was stopped driving around a military base (not UK), when searched it was full of Lidar and thermal / rf equipment. It just so happens the US were setting up an military exercise. The west buys a lot of shiny things and sets up an app on the phone which says give permission for microphones photos and phonebook !!! madness. Ooops off on one again anyway AI needs to be regulated and closely monitored as it could so easily become corrupted and out society is se quick to accept what they like we could end up with the truth being lost. If there were few printing presses then the likelihood of you getting a counterfeit note is very small, now everybody has the ability to distort reality, how do we control that. Sorry rather long there, oh last point re the child throwing his toys. I am pleased finally that Trudeau has shown some balls because the child likes that and is happy if you give him something to boast about. Show weakness and he keeps coming back. If the only tool yo have is a hammer everything looks like a nail the child does not understand world trade the consequences of his bulling. Europe is mad as hell and not taking any more. Our response is not tariffs as that impact the consumer, Europe is no longer prioritising the US. The child should look carefully at what patent countries hold and who supplies critical components to the US. Europe has many options but the US has limited theirs. Denmark ASML holdings who make the extreme ultraviolet lithographic printers a machine critical for the US advanced silicon chip manufacture could easily adjust their priorities. Nova Pharmaceutical who make more then Denmark's gross domestic product are sole supplies of weight loss medication used mostly by Republicans ! As well as supplying Insulin, Nova are a huge company holding a lot of licenses used by american pharma. Not sensible to upset the Dane's. So hang in there because the US people are only just figuring out that they are the ones paying the bill. It is worrying how the rocket man has been given so much access, to me has all the hallmarks of a coup. Good Canadian stand fast and remember your heritage the motherland and Europe are not giving way. To any Canadians reading this look up War Plan Red on wiki. Ops sorry a bit heavy.

[@WOFFY-qc9te]

@@ElectromagneticVideos YT comments a bit flaky so this may be repeated. Deepseek,,, have a look at Daves recent video, I must admit my logic set has a problem getting a grip on and thing not tangible which on our world is anything doing with Applications... The Chinese say they did it for $5m So they set up servers UPS networks routers traffic management comms lines and programmers etc etc.. Nope. Unless the CCP have bankrolled it under research ...... I would not touch it or any Chinese data processing with a barge pole. It is a back door in our systems. I am not sure which agency it was but it was one of the US three lettered ones. Apparently a building near to the Agency had a baby monitor or doorbell something like that. When it contacted the mother ship in China it looked for the strongest signal and that was the Agency router with a quest access ! So when China security police found this they then broke through the agencies pathetic defence using a " Pineapple attack "and accessed the agency network. Huawei was found to have unidentified programming and insisted that the system was not accessible but would not disclose what the programming was for. The UK government had all Huawei kit removed form the 5G network. Dave Evblog did a tare-down of some Huawei kit and it had rather sophisticated architecture. China insider has some interesting info on what they are up to, I take my data in from several sources and from what I see they play the long game using our own systems and laws against us. In the Universities the ration of Chinese students to all others in disproportionate. What is interesting they pay more ! . Where does a Chinese student get this money for fees, accommodation air fares, from the CCP. in return for access to resources like university computers, PHD papers research being done. One students car was stopped driving around a military base (not UK), when searched it was full of Lidar and thermal / rf equipment. It just so happens the US were setting up an military exercise. The west buys a lot of shiny things and sets up an app on the phone which says give permission for microphones photos and phonebook !!! madness. Ooops off on one again anyway AI needs to be regulated and closely monitored as it could so easily become corrupted and out society is se quick to accept what they like we could end up with the truth being lost. If there were few printing presses then the likelihood of you getting a counterfeit note is very small, now everybody has the ability to distort reality, how do we control that. Sorry rather long there, oh last point re the child throwing his toys. I am pleased finally that Trudeau has shown some balls because the child likes that and is happy if you give him something to boast about. Show weakness and he keeps coming back. If the only tool yo have is a hammer everything looks like a nail the child does not understand world trade the consequences of his bulling. Europe is mad as hell and not taking any more. Our response is not tariffs as that impact the consumer, Europe is no longer prioritising the US. The child should look carefully at what patent countries hold and who supplies critical components to the US. Europe has many options but the US has limited theirs. Denmark ASML holdings who make the extreme ultraviolet lithographic printers a machine critical for the US advanced silicon chip manufacture could easily adjust their priorities. Nova Pharmaceutical who make more then Denmark's gross domestic product are sole supplies of weight loss medication used mostly by Republicans ! As well as supplying Insulin, Nova are a huge company holding a lot of licenses used by american pharma. Not sensible to upset the Dane's. So hang in there because the US people are only just figuring out that they are the ones paying the bill. It is worrying how the rocket man has been given so much access, to me has all the hallmarks of a coup. Good Canadian stand fast and remember your heritage the motherland and Europe are not giving way. To any Canadians reading this look up War Plan Red on wiki. Ops sorry a bit heavy.

[@timmotel5804]

Good Day. Very interesting and informative. I have subscribed. Thank You

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Well thank you! I really appreciate that!!!! You will find my videos all science/engineering/ technology related but vary a lot. Hope you enjoy them!

[@myriaddsystems]

Yeah I just happened to be driving round that area...

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

Hope you got a good look!

[@gorak9000]

Have you ever done a video on NEC, the antenna simulator? I'd also like to know why when building waveguide horn feeds for parabolic dishes, a flat scalar rings (or choke rings) is used around the feed for prime focus dishes, vs a conical scalar is used for offset parabolic dishes

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

I have actually wondered about the differences in feedhorns and have some examples of differetn tyoes to show off in a video. I will copy your suggestion to my to do list! I also want to get an EM simulator going - that may the reason I need to do it!

[@ErichRed721]

Are these dual antenna integrated into the radar mesh network too? Have 2 like this on a highway near military fts and regional airport...

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

I dont know if radar is done with vlf. My thought would be that with wavelengths in the 10s of km it wouldn't be great for detecting ship or plane sided things. I was also wondering if there is much directionality due to the two masts. My guess is only a moderate amount since the distance between them (0.6km according to google maps) is small in terms of wavelength. Not sure if the mountains do much blocking of signal to the NE. So I think this VLF stuff is probably more independent and transmit only. If your antennas are big and near an airport, they might be HF (3-30Mhz) which is still used for aircraft crossing the oceans or uninhabited areas if satellite fails. Military also uses HF for redundancy in case more modern high bandwidth stuff is disabled (=hostile nation blows up satellites). Sidenote: 20 years ago I was involved with HF modems and networking for military applications. Its amazing how far a few hundreds watts will go if atmospheric conditions are good.

[@ErichRed721]

@ElectromagneticVideos the set I'm talking about is sitting against a mountain... Hmm 🤔. Could be using the mountain as a kinda of dish or collector. Another set, I think 3 of em, sit near Navy academy, yard on Chesapeake! I can see these used to relay or even direct connect to Eiffel tower 🗼! And then up into the Alps!

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@@ErichRed721 I dont know if mountains are ever used as reflectors - if the rock was a good RF reflector (=conductive) its possible. It would also depend on the angle of slope and how that directs reflections would probably be more like straight up (vertical) which would not be that useful. I do know mountains/hills are used to block RF as done for this radio telescope www.google.com/maps/place/49%C2%B019'14.7%22N+119%C2%B037'14.9%22W/@49.177862,-119.6711952,6411a,35y,12.35h,58.74t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d49.320751!4d-119.620811?hl=en&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIwNS4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Radio_Astrophysical_Observatory Chesapeake antennas - I couldn't find them on google maps but that area looks like a perfect site for trans-atlantic VLF or HF - often when near salt water they use salt marshs as a perfect ground plain.

[@michaelstora70]

Does the naval umbrella antenna work like a discone?

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

A commenter just pointed on the one on the ship is probably a discone, so I goofed. Unbrellas are quite different in operation - the tower and umbrella wires are connected. The unbrella wires act as a capacitor to draw more current though the tower part of the antenna, and apparently the umbrella wires contribute little to the rf transmissions. The other half of the umbrella antenna is the ground - or ground plane.

[@P.SeanCoady]

Drove past and had no idea. I am usually pretty astute to this stuff.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

If its any consolation, I did the same thing the previous time I was there which was about 15 years ago. Unfortunately, easy to miss since they really dont look that spectacular from the main road along the coast.

[@P.SeanCoady]

@ElectromagneticVideos i did take the time to listen to the am band (day time) curious if they still have life as I did see some towers, heck could have been the VLF tower that caught my eye lol. Here in Michigan they had a ELF installation that was somewhere around 84 miles long and transmitted a one-way go no go signal. Michigan was picked because of the high iron/copper content of the ground.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@@P.SeanCoady I'll bet it was those towers - I dont recall seeing any others in that area. AM band - making the video was the first time I turned on the SW radio in a few years. Only got one weak voice station. When I was a kid in the mid-70s we lived in Baghdad for a few years (dad was a diplomat) and used a radio (identical to the one I showed) to get news. The SW (HF) bands were crowded back then - hardly a space between voice, CW, or other channels. What a change - all due to the internet. I did not know that iron/copper content ground was used - it must be conductive enough to form a reasonable ground plane. I wonder how it compares to a salt marsh?

[@therealbarnekkid]

They call the hexagonal building the "helix house."

[@NipkowDisk]

I reckon wideband FM wouldn't be suitable for VLF...! Kidding aside, I had a VLF active receiving antenna/converter many years ago, and used to listen to all sorts of stuff including radio station NLK in Jim Creek, Washington. I came across NLK's antenna by accident well over 40 years ago while driving around on logging roads... that thing is HUGE!!!

[@VicGreenBitcoin]

Fake info about UHF working in water. When diving we use PMR (European version of FRS), which works fine underwater...

[@lycanananas_sq5fox]

You need also some kind of radio license to such experiments. HAM license is for such experiments. Also you should look into 17,2kHz transmitter in Sweeden that is used twice a year for civilian transmission. It is CW only transmitter.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

The Lualualei site is a military installation so they presumably have all the licenses they need. Grimeton in Sweden - Yes! That actually on my bucket list to visit - have to time a trip to Europe sometime to be there when it is transmitting.

[@lycanananas_sq5fox]

@@ElectromagneticVideos yes yes they have but I thinking about using signal generator. It is still RF emission :) I know that such low power is not harful but law is a law. FCC or someone's local FCC could not be so happy.

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

@@lycanananas_sq5fox Oh - ok misunderstood. Your right - but having said that - lots of experiments in labs get done in industry or university without any sort of licensing just by keeping the powers low. The signal strength in this case would have been so low it probably would not have been detectable outside the boundary of my property.

[@Zapruderfilm1963]

Fascinating!! Thank you for the insight 👍 73 de N1XV

[@ElectromagneticVideos]

I'm glad you liked it! I'm guessing you a ham? When I was looking into the VLF site I came across a ham in Oregon who reported receiving the VLF signals from Lululei in Oregon(?) so depending on where you are you might be able to receive them if you rig up a long antenna and some form receiver. I think some standard USB audio ADCs may be suitable.