Beyond Sferics! Anyone Tune in To the Aurora Borealis?

[Rubycon]

This person explains it well in language that most can understand.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I never even realized they made a sound till it was mentioned a while back when I posted pics of ones I took. Would definitely be neat to have some equipment to try to pick stuff up.

 

[Rubycon]

Erect an antenna farm with sufficient gain and couple it (all passive) and during the severe geomagnetic events the GIC amplitude could probably arc (sing at that) and even kill you!
Squirrels do tend to have a thing with the overhead wires.

It would be cool to have the arc singing loud enough to hear at a few hundred meters distance in the quiet countryside. Probably sound like an all out cylon war. Pew pew x 10^26

 

[Red Squirrel]

That kinda sounds like fun. Maybe I'll refrain from touching the antenna if I try that. LOL. What kind of equipment is really needed though, like I'm guessing some kind of radio receiver that can get down to extremely low and wide frequency ranges? For antenna I'm thinking just a single piece of wire between two camera tripods or something would be sufficient, without inducing insane voltages. Need to finder a better and more quiet spot than where I went this summer. Idealy would want to do this in summer as it's too freaking cold in winter to start messing with stuff like that.

Wonder if I could do this right at home and have it come in via coax, or if the nearby power line would induce too much interference. Though it's a straight clean 60hz, I think this stuff is even lower frequency.

 

[Rubycon]

Longwire and shortwave radio. A HF transceiver (Kenwood TS140S, 440S, etc.) works wonders. Have to sweep through 80-40meters to find the strongest QRM.
I've had a fetish with this stuff since the early 70s. Always would grab an AM radio and tune to the extreme ends of the bands (<520KHz or > 1.6MHz) and check out sferics. I've heard the hissing noise. I was made fun of because they thought I was possessed listening to demons, ghosts, and martians!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Haha I have a basic AM radio I always like to play around and see what I can pickup too, I've picked up AM stations from all the way to Chicago at times. Skip is an interesting thing.

Might have to pickup a shortwave radio to play around with. I've actually been toying with getting my ham license, always been interested in electronics and RF stuff but never really pursued it much. Will need to pickup some books.

 

[Rubycon]

Skip is interesting. Some believe it proves time travel is possible.

 

[BUTCH1]

Longwire and shortwave radio. A HF transceiver (Kenwood TS140S, 440S, etc.) works wonders. Have to sweep through 80-40meters to find the strongest QRM.
I've had a fetish with this stuff since the early 70s. Always would grab an AM radio and tune to the extreme ends of the bands (<520KHz or > 1.6MHz) and check out sferics. I've heard the hissing noise. I was made fun of because they thought I was possessed listening to demons, ghosts, and martians!

My father was a "ham" hobbyist, as someone who grew up in the age of radio and a TV shop owner it was sort of natural. I also remember listening to his various short-wave rigs and hearing all those noises, to a 7-8yr old the imagination runs wild!. Later in the '70's his "hobby" got more serious as did the size of the antenna's outside the house. He had a 75ft tower running a 4-element 50ft beam with 3Kw final output, despite his attempts with various filters to power output was so strong it could be heard on the phone line and the lights would dim a bit during modulation peaks. The only reason the neighbors put up with it was free TV repairs or a great deal on a new one. Anyway, that's just cool as hell, I had no idea that northern lights generated natural sounds, thanks!.

 

[BUTCH1]

Skip is interesting. Some believe it proves time travel is possible.

So I take it you've seen the movie "Frequency"?, mega-cool for radio nuts and a great movie by itself.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I forgot about that movie, I need to watch it some time.

I've actually been kinda toying with getting a ham license myself or at least picking up some equipment to listen and see what I find.

Would be cool to setup an APRS i-gate or even just a private receiver. If I did get my license I'd want to send up APRS equipped weather balloons too. The "Happy Birthday" balloons are all the rage now. They don't expand and blow up like the standard weather balloons.

 

[Red Squirrel]

And I just finished going down the rabbit hole looking at shortwave radios, ham radios, SDR dongles etc...

I need to pay off my A/C unit before I spend more money on hobby stuff.

 

[Rubycon]

So I take it you've seen the movie "Frequency"?, mega-cool for radio nuts and a great movie by itself.

Yes I did see it. I do enjoy those type of movies despite their plot holes to make them more understandable to the average audience.

https://youtu.be/SBM82Ju2kJU?t=156

 

[Spacehead]

Well, typically we don't see too many northern lights here. I've only seen them 2 times here. Would they need to be "overhead" to hear them? Or on the horizon?
Would you be able to hear meteors with the same setup?

 

[Rubycon]

Yes you can hear them practically anywhere depending on conditions and the band you're listening to.

 

[Linflas]

Haha I have a basic AM radio I always like to play around and see what I can pickup too, I've picked up AM stations from all the way to Chicago at times. Skip is an interesting thing.

Might have to pickup a shortwave radio to play around with. I've actually been toying with getting my ham license, always been interested in electronics and RF stuff but never really pursued it much. Will need to pickup some books.

You need on of these https://youtu.be/iM3OfqNlL2Q.
I still have the one I built as a kid but haven't tried powering it on in ages. Speaking of skip, when I was in the Navy our aircraft had 1000 watt HF radios in them. We would be floating around in the Med and was doing radio checks with Hilo, Hawaii.