Someone the other side of the world asked on a group if the ZEVS 82Hz transmission was still active, thinking there would be a flood of replies I left it to the others. After a couple of days it seemed everyone else was doing the same, so I fired up my VLF set up and took a look, a carrier of the usual strength was there. Its operational I replied.
There were some queries, ZEVS shows on G3ZJO’s Grabber from June 2016 but not elsewhere. I looked again live there was the line, on frequency. I then thought back to June 2016 when the Capture was left on screen. I went over to Windows7 at that time because K1JT’s latest WSJTX was not just crashing and failing to upload but locking up XP totally every time it was shut down. Naturally I did a test of the VLF set up on Win7 all looked normal. The Grabber screen had recorded the results.
This is what the capture looks like now (no carrier at 82Hz)
I investigated the line at 82Hz it was so convincing as the ZEVS carrier it showed changes as if from propagation, but there was no usual DATA ever, there were tones of several seconds length at times which I suspected coud be a new keying scheme. I went back to Windows XP the phantom ZEVS was not present.
So it seems my sound card when used on Win7 produces a weak carrier, where, bang on 82Hz. Cunningly produced to mislead the world.
From some research it seems that although there are Win7 drivers for the Delta44 sound card it will never perform correctly on Win7 and up. Increasingly software won’t work on XP anymore, so another expensive piece of kit bites the dust.
Radio - LF/MF to Microwaves 