Receivers

We have several Receivers, most of which are homemade, all of them work very well. Cliff assembled the RS-4 and VLF2 receivers from kit form (Cliff says they were no sweat) . Larry built all of the homemade receivers.
INSPIRE VLF-2


The VLF-2 walking stick configuration.                   It is mounted in a closedcell foam padded box
                                                                              made from old erector set parts. We've found this
                                                                              mount to be effective in preventing damage during
                                                                              transportation.
INSPIRE RS-4

The RS-4 walking stick configuration.   This mount is also made of foam and erector set parts. This is our very first VLF reciever.

Princeton Applied Research Receiver

This golden find belongs to Ron Hunt. It was designed for research, testing and development of circuits in the field or the workbench. It has an internal battery system (four 9 volt batteries currently) with a built-in charging system. It has a calibrated gain control, 


it also has very useful low-pass and high-pass adjustable filters.   
 
 

X2000A Receiver

This is the latest homemade Receiver. It was designed to handle the worst of weather conditions. It uses 8 AA batteries and draws about 10 milliamps. This unit is an impoved version of the unit below. For more info on this receiver, just follow this link: X2000A page
 

First Sealed Receiver




Unfortunately, I have had problems with this receiver. The design was good but the circuit board I had installed the parts on was of an older type. The moisture buildup problem drove me to abandon it and build a new one. If circuit was built on a double-sided pc board with one side being the shield, it would have worked a lot better. I have started to work on an improved version of this unit with many modifications to the circuitry.

I don't have a name for it yet. I designed this receiver while I was living in Oregon. It uses several low-pass stages for filtering in between the one FET and both bipolar transistors. It is very sensitive unit housed in an outdoor satellite converter box which is hermetically sealed. I have been using this receiver for all of my VLF recordings since 1998. The ouput is tied to the input through a high-pass filter to feed the WWV receiver with a signal. Here are a couple pictures of it. I have a schematic of it also.
 



The Larrycrafters   VLF 101-A (homemade)


This reciever was built with Radio Shack parts,the electronic design follows the INSPIRE RS-4
schematics. The binding post / banana jacks work really nice for making antenna and ground connections, they
are also easier to work with in the dark than screw terminals. It is powered by a single nine volt battery.

The Ulti-Receiver (homemade)

 


This Receiver was also built with Radio Shack parts, the electronic design is a little different from the
INSPIRE RS-4.The purpose of this unit is mainly to hear VLF without the hassle of hooking up a
bunch of wires, grounds, speaker amplifier, (to record from it, it must be grounded). It has separate
level controls for recording and monitor speaker output, also bass and treble controls. It uses binding
post / banana jacks for antenna and ground connections.


The Rack Mount Receiver (homemade)


front view


This Receiver is designed for VLF data taking, it has a built-in mixer,
time stamp pushbutton switch, high pass filter, 1/4" microphone jack
on the front panel. It also has level controls for the built-in E-Field
receiver, external B-Field receiver, WWV receiver, and microphone.
all of the connections are BNC type, it can be configured for stereo
or mono recording with a flip of a switch.


Rack Mount WWV Receiver


This was a priceless find at a surplus warehouse, it is a rack mounted
wwv receiver, Specific Products model WVTR standard frequency
receiver, it has a built-in speaker, battery power test button, runs on ac
or dc, Crystal controlled for stability, BNC connections for the antenna
and audio output. It receives at 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 Mhz, it works
very well.

WWV Receiver

 


This is the backup WWV receiver, Sony model ICF-2010