A Rare Catch on 17.2kHz

It was that time of year again when SAQ Grimeton made one of its few transmissions of the year. For its latest annual transmission on Alexanderson Day (5th July 2020), the station sent 2 transmissions, one at 09:00 UTC, and the other one at 12:00 UTC. Both of them were on 17.2Khz, with the call sign ‘SAQ’.

If you are interested in VLF, then this is a great time to try receiving this station. The website is at

https://alexander.n.se/?lang=en

The pictures here are, once again, courtesy of Peter Newton. They show the scene at last year’s Alexanderson Day event in June 2019, as well as giving an impression of this latest transmission. This year, due to the Corona (COVID-19) pandemic, no visitors were present for either of the transmissions, and a reduced staff was in attendance. However, the event was covered live on YouTube. Both videos were pretty much the same but were well worth watching because they covered both the start-up of the transmitter and its shut-down. 

The URL for the 09:00 UTC video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I47HNbxNQcw

The URL for the 12:00 UTC video can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU91iLrkrDM

A full report and more details about SAQ can be found in the August issue of RadioUser.

(Source, and thanks to, Peter Newton GM0EZR – Ed.).