Part 2 of 3,Natural VLF Radio Listening
Stephen McGreevy
[This article reprinted from "A WHISTLER SERENADE"]
I wanted fellow radio people in this Newsgroup to read this
article about natural Radio] e-mail me for details about a
pocket-portable receiver avail. to hear this stuff...]
(I can e-mail or fax you back with info--SpM)
WWW server with Windows WAV files of Natural ELF/VLF
Radio "sounds.":
www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/mcgreevy/
Special Thanks to Larry Granroth at the Univ. of Iowa Physics
and Astronomy department.
A LISTENER'S STORY ABOUT ELF/VLF "NATURAL RADIO"
EMISSIONS OF EARTH IN THE 0.1 TO 10 kHz FREQUENCIES.
By Stephen P. McGreevy, (spmc...@ix.netcom.com/
s.mcg...@genie.geis.com)
>>>>>>>> PART 2 OF 3 <<<<<<<<<<<
One radio "mentor" who sparked my fascination with whistlers and
Natural Radio is a gentleman named Michael Mideke, who has been
an avid enthusiast involved in various esoteric radio (and non-
radio) pursuits since the early 1970's. Mike taught me quite a
considerable amount of knowledge about longwave radio receiving
and transmitting experimentation at radio frequencies much higher
than Natural Radio, and he himself began regularly monitoring
Natural Radio about the middle of 1988, more than a year before I
would hear my first whistler in the Oregon desert. For the past
25 years, Mike, his wife Elea, and two sons lived as caretakers
on a large ranch in a remote central California canyon, far from
electric powerlines. Here, Mike was able to string out antenna
wires over thousands of feet in length and running in several
different compass directions, and connect them to his plethora of
radio receivers. His remote, electrically-quiet location was
also ideal for listening to whistlers. Over the years, Mike has
also made many hundreds of hours of recordings of amazing radio
sounds of the Earth. He was particularly fortunate to be able to
monitor 24 hours a day during the height of the sunspot
cycležfrom 1989-1991žwhen solar activity, geo-magnetic
disturbances, and whistlers were most numerous. Mike also passed
along the results of his own receiver experimentation, thus
positively influencing my own receiver experimentation.
In late summer of 1990, I began experimenting with whistler
receivers employing short "whip" antennas no longer than 5 to 6
feet in length. These "whip receivers" successfully monitored
whistler activity, though my earliest versions lacked
sensitivity. I must credit the original idea of using a short
whip antenna to a longtime close friend and fellow whistler
enthusiast, Gail West, who lives in Santa Rosa, California and
has accompanied me on many of my road trips and whistler
listening expeditions. Gail repeatedly witnessed my frustration
with stringing out unwieldy wire antennas, and on one particular
morning (summer 1989) in the northern Nevada desert, commented
"it sure would be nice to use just a small whip antenna rather
than long wires for a whistler receiver antenna." Also, while on
a solo listening session in the hills of Marin County, California
in February 1990, I heard a strong whistler howl from the tape
recorder's speaker with nearly all but about 10 feet of antenna
wire rolled back onto the spool. This experience reminded me of
Gail's idea and made the whip antenna idea seem more plausible.
While the idea of a hand-held whistler receiver seemed somewhat
wishful thinking early on in my experimentation with whistler
receivers, it would become reality in just over two years of
whistler listening and receiver tinkering.
Increasingly better and more sensitive yet simpler whip antenna
whistler receivers were continuously devised on my workbench. On
a beautiful spring morning in May 1991 while hiking on a trail in
the mountains east of San Diego with friend Frank Cathell of
Conversion Research, I demonstrated my BBB-2 whip antenna
whistler receiver. Frank was so fascinated with this receiver
that he jumped on the bandwagon, and by August 1991 after a
furious 3 months' of receiver tinkering, Frank and I created a
sensitive battery-powered whistler receiver that required only a
small 33-inch antenna, was cigarette pack sized and very
portable, called the "WR-3," and we shortly began selling this
new pocket receiver on a casual basis. The WR-3 opened up
whistler monitoring to practically everyone-even non-technical
peopležwilling to at least undertake the effort of finding a
reasonably powerline "hum" free location where whistlers and
other natural VLF radio phenomena could then be listened to and
enjoyed as easily as listening to regular broadcast radio. At
this point thanks to the WR-3, whistlers and lightning sferics
were very easy to hearžnow it was just up to Mother Nature to put
on a show.
My difficulties with whistler receivers and antennas was now
behind me, but I still retain very fond memories of the
beginnings of my own interest in whistler listening and study.
In June 1989, Gail and I heard our first whistlers "live" while
camped deep in the eastern Oregon desert near Steens Mountain.
In anticipation of the trip and not yet aware of more advanced
receiver circuits available for this pursuit, I built a crude
"whistler-filter" which I knew would at least block out a lot of
the potential man-made signals which might overload my tape-
recorder's audio-amplifier. During the days leading up to desert
trip, Summer thunderstorms had been plaguing the Great Basin
areas of central and northern Nevadažthe result of the typical
summertime "monsoonal" moisture which sometimes gets driven up
northward from the southwestern states of Arizona and New Mexico
toward the inter-mountain region of the western U.S. (including
Utah and Nevada). July and August are the months of the most
spectacular lightning storm displays that pound almost daily
throughout the deserts and mountains of western North America.
As Gail and I arrived at our intended campsite in the Black Rock
Desert of northern Nevada, one of the more fiercer-looking
cumulonimbus clouds drifted in our direction, and a light rain
began to patter the parched desert dirt. Shortly thereafter, the
wind picked up accompanied by the rumble of thunder. It looked
like we were going to be in for quite a bit of this judging by
the looks of the clouds. As we tried to set up our "Tahjmatent"ž
a huge dome tent which was tall enough to stand up in and roomy
enough for 10 people to sleep inžthe winds started to blow so
hard all Gail and I could do was just stand there holding the now
horizontally flailing tent. The situation seemed rather dismal,
however the skies to the north looked almost cloud-free, so we
decided to cram our big wad of a tent and other supplies back
into my small Toyota coupe and head farther north to an alternate
location in Oregon about 100 miles away. We would return to the
Black Rock Desert the following month under clear skies.
Arriving in the Alvord Desert of south-eastern Oregon with about
1 1/2 hours of sunlight left, we set up the tent under clear blue
skies while occasionally stealing glances at the still ominous-
looking skies to the distant south, hoping it would not come up
our way. Fortunately, we were spared any further harassment from
the weather and I became confident I could unroll my nearly 500
meter-long wire across the sagebrush. I connected my whistler
filter to this wire and "grounded" the other connection to the
car. Connecting my tape-recorder to the filter, I was rewarded
by loud snapping and crackling from all the lighting happening
south of us.
The following morning at sunrise under cloudless skies, I turned
on the tape-recorder and listened to the now greatly reduced
amount of lightning static. But, a few of the louder lightning
"pops" had whistlers (or what I thought sounded like "whizzers")
happening a second or two afterward! I shouted for joy and
thrust the headphones at Gail for her to listen, too. We were
hearing our first whistlers, though they sounded different from
the few I had heard recorded on cassette tape by Michael Mideke
back in central California. The whistlers went on for an hour or
so then died away. The following morning, the whistlers were
back, but even louder! An already very enjoyable desert trip had
turned into a milestone for me!
Now that I had heard whistlers on my own, I became "hooked" with
this very esoteric aspect of radio listening. I had been
enjoying shortwave listening to stations around the world and
amateur "ham" radio for the past dozen years, but this was
something very new and fascinatingžsomething that played well
into my other casual and hobby interests in geo-physics,
meteorology, and radio wave propagation studies.
Over the next few years, I would learn a great deal about natural
radio phenomena and how to build excellent receiving equipment to
listen for whistlers and the like. One of the main goals was to
build a whistler receiver that would not require a whole roll of
antenna wire but only a small whip antennaža desire which came to
fruition in the spring of 1990, when I "accidently" heard a loud
whistler while rolling up the final few meters of antenna wire.
I knew it was possible to hear whistlers with small antennas, and
as I've already mentioned, a prototype to my portable hand-held
"WR-3" receiver was devised a in the spring of 1991 with the help
of another radio friend, Frank Cathell of Conversion Research.
In addition to all of my whistler receiver tinkering, trials and
successes mentioned above, serious and regular natural radio
listening (and quality recordings) began in February 1991, when
nearly every Sunday morning well before sunrise (the "prime time"
to listen for whistlers), I would pack my favorite whistler
receiver, a small reel-to-reel tape recorder, and lunch into a
knap sack and bicycle to the nearby hills. Upon reaching the
base of the hills, I would then dismount and walk the bike up via
a fire access-road to my favorite listening spotža flat ridgeline
overlooking much of Marin County, San Francisco, and San Pablo
Bay at an elevation of about 600 feet above sea-levelžwhich I
began calling "Whistler Hill." Here, I would listen for
whistlers, and if there were any happening, run the tape
recorder. I was rewarded by many beautiful sunrises and many
nice whistlers on my weekly visits to Whistler Hill, and I was
quite happy with my current receiver, a unit which used a 66-inch
whip antenna, called the "MC-1." One memorable morning near
Easter 1991, a "huge" whistleržthe loudest of the
morningžoccurred just as the sun began peeking above the north-
northeastern horizon. It was in this year that I would really
discover the aesthetic beauty of whistler listening while out in
nature!
While I was always glad to hear whistlers in the hills, it was
not always easy to awake at 4 a.m. in the cold and bicycle the
few miles up to Whistler Hill. Many of those Sunday mornings
would have been better spent sleeping a few hours longer, but
Oh!, was I so glad when those whistlers would be pouring forth in
my receiver's headphones as another gorgeous sunrise was
forthcomingžthen I was always glad I made the effort to get up
early! But then again, I would sometimes get up to Whistler Hill
only to hear NOTHING except the everpresent crackling of Earth's
ongoing electrical storm commotion. And if the weather was
gloomy, I was usually tempted to ride back home instead of
continuing on my usual 8-10 mile bike and hike.
Why DIDN'T I stay home and listen to whistlers from the comfort
of my bed, as is generally possible with more conventional
broadcast radio? The problem lies with the electric-mains grid
which has spread nearly every place man has settled.
Alternating-current electric power lines emit "hum" at 60 cycles-
per-second in the Americas, and 50 c.p.s. (Hz) in Europe and
Asia. In addition to these "fundamental" AC power frequencies,
"harmonic" energy is also radiated (120, 180, 240, 300, 360 Hz,
etc.), or as in Europe and Asia: 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 Hz,
etc.)žoften to well above 1 or 2 kHz. Since whistler receivers
are sensitive to these electric power frequencies, any natural
radio events which might be occurring get masked by this terribly
annoying humming sound, should one try to listen anywhere near AC
powerlines.
The only solution to AC power-line "hum" is to locate a listening
spot away from AC power poles and wiresžoften as far as several
miles before the hum levels are reduced to low or nil levels.
This necessitates walking, hiking, bicycling, or driving to
remote locations where there are few or no AC power linesžeasy to
do in many parts of California and the West but often very
difficult in flat land or urban locales. Sometimesžand with good
filters in the whistler receiveržone can listen as close as a
couple-hundred feet (or maybe even closer) to residential AC
electric wires. On a few fortunate and astounding occasions,
whistlers can get so loud as to even be heard through the loud
power-line hum levels encountered in a suburban backyard,
demanding the whistler listener to immediately relocate to their
favorite "quiet" listening spot in order to hear and tape record
such magnificently giant whistlers, and at the same time praying
that the monster whistlers still are going on when the whistler
receiver is again turned on! Murphy's Law and my experiences
generally suggest they will be gone and not to return until
another inopportune time...
My tape libraries of whistlers and other natural radio phenomena
vastly increased in late 1992 and throughout 1993 and early 1994.
The stimulus to get out and make natural radio recordings came
when, after purchasing a "camper-van" in July 1992, Gail and I
headed up California's North Coast, stopping for the night at
Westport Union Landing Beach north of Fort Bragg. We heard nice
whistlers that evening and morning during darkness using our WR-
3's clamped in the van's rear doors while laying in our comfy
beds. Occasionally, however, one or both WR-3's would slip out
of the door and nearly hit our heads. Gail came up with an idea
to have a whistler receiver with an antenna that could remain
outside while a control box could be put next to the beds. Well,
I got right to work on this great idea of hers upon returning
home, and quickly designed an excellent "WR-4" whistler receiver
in which the receiving antenna (2.5 meters in length) is mounted
on the van's read door ladder and the control-box containing
filter switches, headphone and tape-recorder jacks, etc. could be
placed next to the bed! Now, I could make recordings while
comfortably in bed, even while dozing offžletting the recorder
run for 45 minutes or until I awoke to monitor the situation.
Since recording became very "convenient" while campingžno more
sore arms holding the receiver out the window or standing out in
the cold and win, and not as much sleep deprivation as beforežI
(alone or with Gail) am now able to locate to superbly quiet
camping/listening locations deep in the desert or near
mountainous areas and wait for conditions to present interesting
natural radio sounds. The past couple of years has seen the
combining of my enjoyment of camping and road trips with natural
radio listening.
The ease of whistler listening with the WR-4 and our love or
camping trips has resulted in about a hundred hours of recording
in 1993 and 1994 from over 10,000 miles of travelža natural radio
tape library which has become one of the better ones from an
amateur, but I have no doubt that Mike Mideke's has to clearly be
the FINEST amateur/hobby tape library in the world, since he
LIVED in a quiet location free from strong powerline "hum" and
has not had to travel to enjoy natural radio.
When Donald Cyr initially inquired if I would like to contribute
some thoughts on whistler listening and experiences during the
past couple of years since I last contributed material to his
book: America's First Crop Circle; Crop Circle Secrets Part 2, I
said "sure, I'd love to write something for your new book." Don
was interested in any information I might be able to offer, such
as where the best places to hear whistlers are, or if I found any
particular places that whistlers were consistently stronger than
in other locations. I assume he was hopeful that my findings
might tie in to his theory, which I'll call "The Marion Island-
Wiltshire Plain Crop Circle Theory," (a name I have created for
this article) that suggests whistlersžat least the ones which
might have caused many English Crop Circles in the late 1980's
and early 1990's-are highly localized phenomena that are launched
at a given point, such as Marion Island in the south Atlantic
Ocean, and are ducted via the magnetosphere along a line-of-force
to the northern hemisphere, specifically, to southern England,
where they, if they do not cause odd impressions in wheat fields
of the Wiltshire Plain, will nonetheless be very LOUD indeed to
one listening for them with a whistler receiver.
Don's theory, backed by his friend and colleague James Brett, was
first presented to his readers in CROP CIRCLE SECRETS, PART 1,
published in 1991 and highly recommended reading for this
discussion as is PART 2, published in 1992. This particular book
of Don's generated a good deal of interesting dialogue, and
discussion. Of course, Don and James's Crop Circle Theory was
really aimed at stimulating query and discussion about the what
the mysterious forces which might be creating such incredible and
beautiful impressions in the English landscapežand that is the
true driving force of inquiry and research. Other theories were
pondered, suggested, debated, and dismissed by various
contributers to Don's books, and they ranged from elaborate UFO
theories, vortices and balls of light, military exercises (there
are several military installations in that English region),
underground forces of electromagnetic nature, to suppositions
that they were plain and simply, artistic hoaxes concocted in the
night by creative people armed with poles and chains.
Don and James were fascinated by the whistler theory as presented
by researchers Storey Helliwell, The Institute of Radio Engineers
(I.R.E.), et al., and they thought this theory was as good (if
not better than most) at explaining a possible origin of Crop
Circles. What seemed fascinating to Don and James was that
Marion Island, also home to a secretive military installation,
was at the far end of a magnetospheric duct, i.e., at a conjugate
point to south-western England. Perhaps lightning storms,
enhanced by the odd geography of Marion Island, or perhaps, a
secret military experiment there, were generating great bursts of
electromagnetic energy that would enter a magnetospheric field-
aligned duct and arrive in England as a powerful whistler, which
would cause Crop Circle by perhaps affecting the stems of the
wheat stalks in odd manners.
From a scientific point of view, howeveržand from what both
amateur and professional whistler listeners and researchers have
foundžit is hard to believe whistlers were so concentrated in
their energy area and also "intelligent" to create such lovely
patterns in the English fields. Radio engineers and other
"technical" people involved with radio waves generally know that
it is impossible to confine a radio wave to an area or volume
less than 1/2 its wave length. In the case of whistler energy
emerging from the confines of its duct and resuming the velocity
of light (300,000 km/186,000 miles per second), its (full-wave)
size is from 19 miles at 10 kHz to almost 190 miles at 1
kHzžpretty large! Mike Mideke eloquently expressed this reality
in the final few paragraphs on page 27 and the first few
paragraphs of page 28 of CROP CIRCLE SECRETS. Part 2. Also, the
power of a radio wave (also known as the "field-strength") from
even the strongest and loudest whistlers ever heard and/or
recorded by anyone have never been as strong as the VLF radio
waves generated from nearby lightning storms, though the lesser
energy from whistlers is of course sustained much longer than the
split-second burst of energy from a lightning stroke, and, or
course, whistler radio energy does differ substantially from a
lightning bolt's.
While whistlers would hardly seem to be so super-concentrated in
their strength and focal area to cause such intricate and sharply
defined impressions in plant material like crop circles, data
gathered in the past 35 years by manned and un-manned monitoring
stations located worldwide has found that whistlers do occupy a
"footprint"žthat is-they are heard loudest at a given location at
ground level, and then gradually weaken as one moves
concentrically away from "ground zero." Most whistlers are heard
in a 500 to 1000 mile radius from the exit point region of its
duct, though it's sound characteristics may be different from one
place to another within this whistler reception area. Whistlers
also tend to cluster in the middle and upper-middle latitudes of
the globežbetween 25 and 60 degrees north/south, and are rarely
heard at the "geomagnetic equator"ža wandering latitudinal line
on the globe at the half way point of any great-circle line drawn
from Earth's magnetic north pole to Earth's magnetic south pole.
Most of the continental United States and southern Canada are
between these latitudes to hear not only splendid whistlers but
also beautiful VLF radio "chorus" from Auroral displays. The
same goes for most of Europe, especially the British Isles and
Scandinavia. In the Southern hemisphere; southern Argentina and
Chile; the southern parts of Australia, particularly Tasmania;
New Zealand; and perhaps, the Cape Horn region of South Africa,
are similarly at the right latitudes to hear whistlers and
chorus. The South Island of New Zealand and the Tierra del Fuego
region of South America, plus the Antarctic Peninsula, are where
the good displays of Aurora and auroral chorus can be seen and
heard.
Listening to whistlers from near one's home town or on road trips
can be very enjoyable and inspiring, but it is even more fun to
travel abroad and check out whistler reception in other parts of
the world. In late May of 1992, my father and I went on holiday
to Ireland, enjoying a 12-day coach tour of the entire country.
I brought my pocket-sized WR-3 whistler receiver, hoping to catch
and record some "Irish whistlers." The first night happened to
be at the Clare Inn not far from Dromoland Castle and Newmarket-
on-Fergus. Surrounding this hotel was a beautiful golf course,
small lake, meadows, and woodlands. There were only a few
powerlines near the hotel and main road to Ennis, leaving much of
the golf course and meadowland fairly free from excessive Ac
power hum, and therefore, good spots to listen for whistlers, as
I tested out a few hours after we arrived bleary-eyed from an all
night flight across the northern Atlantic.
In anticipation of hearing whistlers in this quiet and exotic
location, I spent much of the pre-midnight period walking around
with my Sony LW/MW/SW/FM radio, enjoying the Irish Radio Telefis
Eireian (RTE) 1 & 2 radio networks, and the nighttime reception
of British and European mediumwave (AM) stations, tape recording
much of this reception with my trusty micro-cassette machine. At
around midnight, after the BBC on longwave 198 from Droitwich
signed-off after the maritime weather report and a cheery "good
night," I flicked on my WR-3. Lo and behold, there were nice
whistlers, albeit only occasionally, since it still was a bit
"early" for the really good whistler shows, which like to start
up after 4 am. Catching some sleep in the woods (the hotel was
rather far-off at this point) I awoke around 3 am, turned on the
WR-3 to hear more whistlersžand there were LOTS of them, followed
by weak "Auroral chorus" that rose up from the static at around
0400, and remained past my first Irish sunrise, when I drifted
back to the hotel room to catch an hour or so of terribly-needed
sleep!
That night would prove to be the only place our tour group would
spend the night where there was open spacežthe rest of the hotels
we stayed in would be located in towns or deep within Dublin, and
surrounded by hundreds of electrical lines with no access to
large open spaces. I had to be happy with broadcast listening
with the Sony, which was always very interesting, anyway. It
sure was great to now have natural radio recordings from outside
the West Coast.
While scientists and hobby whistler listeners have pretty much
determined what regions of Earth are in "whistler country," it is
never possible to predict where, at any given time or on any
given day, whistlers will be heardžloudly, weakly, or even at
all. It's conceivable there are days where a whistler hardly
occurs anywhere on the globežundeniably there are days and even
weeks when not a single whistler is heard by listeners located in
otherwise ideal whistler reception regions of Earth, such as
Ireland and Europe, the northern tier of the U.S., southern
Canada, New Zealand, and so forth.
Conversely, there are days when there seem to be whistlers
happening nearly everywhere, as though a giant switch was turned
on somewhere in Earth's magnetosphere to issue forth a barrage of
weak and strong whistlers too frequent to count! Like weather
fronts and hurricanes, it would appear that given a day when
things are ripe for strong whistler production, the locations
that strong whistlers are heard constantly changes, depending on
the locations of lightning storms; the magnetospheric whistler
duct beginnings and end points; and the day/night region of the
globežparticularly the midnight to 6 a.m. periodžwhich, as we all
know, moves westward 15 degrees an hour.
Thanks to simultaneous whistler monitoring and tape recording
efforts, first by 1950's and 60's whistler researchers such as
Storey, Morgan, Helliwell, etc.; and later by coordinated amateur
and student study groups, hundreds of individual whistlers have
been documented. Thier findings have determined that the average
whistler is heard in an area of about 500 miles radius, though
the "big whoppers" may be heard as far as 2000 to 3000 miles from
its loudest "arrival point."
One of my favorite examples of intense scrutiny of individual
whistlers (by at least 25-30 listening groups or single
monitors), was of "The Giant Whistlers" of the morning of March
28, 1992, specifically, of two whistlers occurring about an hour
apart. In and of itself, these two huge whistlers are not really
different from other strong whistlers which occur in the hundreds
and maybe thousands throughout any season, but it WAS remarkable
in that they were serendipitously caught on tape by so many
listeners, who were participating in a high school student
monitoring effort coordinated by a team of scientists and high
school professors, called "PROJECT INSPIRE."
The INSPIRE effort was sanctioned by NASA to study the ground
reception pattern of radio wave emissions from a special
"modulated electron-beam" generator (called "ATLAS") aboard the
Space Shuttle (STS-45), which flew in late March, 1992. A
schedule of ATLAS "transmissions" was established in hopes that
the ground-based VLF radio receivers set up by the student groups
would hear its emissions. Unfortunately, the shuttle-based ATLAS
unit failed after only two (unheard) transmissions. Fortunately,
it was decided the students groups and other individuals should
adhere to their INSPIRE listening schedule, and also to "backup"
listening schedules arranged for the mornings of March 26-30,
1992. It was during many of these scheduled regular and backup
listening periods that many interesting natural radio events were
captured, including several strong and powerful whistlers. A
very detailed report entitled PROJECT INSPIRE DATA REPORT was
produced in August 1992 by Michael Mideke, who was the project's
data analyst. It is from this report where the following
interesting scenarios of whistler reception has been interpreted.
CONTINUED IN PART 3...