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Help me locate HF radars

I have been asked by 60m operators in Europe to help them locate some HF radars, one on 5240 and the other on 5350 kHz. I can't use Kiwi/TDOA myself (doesn't seem to work with Firefox/WinXP) so I am asking for TDoA enthusiasts to help. These radars are about 30kHz wide, emitting a continuous 43Hz pulse. They are NOT Over The Horizon Radars but beam vertically upwards, so they may be difficult to locate. For practice, try the one on 3180 kHz which is at Juliusruh in Germany. The 5240/5350 radars may be in eastern europe.

Thanks
Peter G3PLX

Comments

  • Hi Peter,

    So far I haven't been able to find any KiWi's with a good enough signal on 5240 & 5350.

    The one in Germany is difficult enough even with a good number of KiWi's dotted around the area.

    If you want to try for the one in Germany, you can use this URL

    http://southwest.ddns.net:8073/?f=3180.00iqz7&pbw=5000&ext=tdoa,lat:55.14,lon:10.57,z:6,DF0KL,OZ1AEF,DL3ZID,JO67oj

    The green Tag on the TDoA map below shows the TDoA position.



    Regards,

    Martin - G8JNJ
  • This sounds like another ionosonde. There is one on the list Here from Juliusruh and these do point straight up. There are several in Europe.


    They transmit with approximately the rep rate you describe and look for returns to measure Fcrit and other interesting parameters, while sweeping various portions of the spectrum but, I think, avoiding the ham bands. I have one local to me in Boulder, Colorado which runs about 4 kW and and happen to know the person who operates and maintains it, Terry W0ASP. If it is useful I can probably get more information from him.
    Glenn n6gn
  • Plenty of various sweeps in that part of the spectrum on this extreme eastern Russian one http://khabsdr.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/?f=5240.00iqz7&pbw=10000

    I'm not sure I'd be able to pick the correct one out from among that lot.

    Regards,

    Martin - G8JNJ
  • Glenn:

    Thanks for your comments. I have studied ionosondes for 20 years, but they always sweep up the spectrum. The one I am hearing now is not one of these. The Digisonde sounders do have what they call a Skymap mode which runs for 2 minutes every 15 minutes on a fixed frequency, but only runs in the daytime since it maps the shape of the (reflecting) ionosphere. This one isn't a digisonde - it seems to be a research device on a fixed frequency. There are two others like it in Western Europe that we know about.

    I now have a kludge that enables me to do the TDoA myself with Windows XP and this radar seems to be on the west shore of the Caspian Sea. That would tie in with a previous reference on the KiwiSDR identification ribbon to an OTHR in this location. This one is definitely not an OTHR.

    Martin:
    The Khabarovsk signal you found is the same prf as this one, but seems very much wider, unless it's three of them on adjacent channels. There are also some CODAR surface-wave radars around that frequency too. There are plenty of those around Europe. They usually sweep downwards with 1 or 2 sweeps/sec.

    73
    Peter
  • edited November 2018
    Hi,

    With help of Quatar and few other KiwiSDRs yesterday I've been successive to TDoA 60 m radar(s) to Makhachkala, Republic of Dagestan, Russia.



    Further Google searching revealed that this might be «Sunflower» radar located in Kaspiysk to Souh from Makhachkala. Here is the Wikimapia object for this radar: wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=42.879380&lon=47.670010&z=18&m=bs

    It was also noted in IARU R1 November 2013 Monitoring Newsletter Part 1, Section 4: iarums-r1.org/iarums/news2013/news1311.pdf
  • @ UR5VIB

    That's a good catch, I spent quite a lot of time last year looking with Google Earth around the edge of the Caspean Sea trying to find that site.

    Well spotted :-)

    Regards,

    Martin - G8JNJ
  • Thank you UR5VIB. I had also done some TDoA plots but, like Martin, I had not been able to find the site. I have passed this information to the 5 MHz enthusiasts.

    73
    Peter G3PLX
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