Thanks, Larry Granroth at uiowa.edu! :]

Audio Files Page Level One of Three

THE LATEST VLF Soundbite Additions - MP3 Audio Files | VLF SOUNDBITES PAGE TWO | VLF SOUNDBITES PAGE THREE | Triple MP3 Album 'AuroralChoruses 1 to 3' - 7 hours of MP3 audio | Natural Radio Home Page at www.auroralchorus.com | Contact Info. and SpM field-photos] |

Build the McGreevy BBB-4b Whistler Receiver | WR-3/VLF Listening Guide and VLF Handbook | Gram-42 PC Spectrogram application by R.S. Horne (gram42.zip)

1. NEW MP3 audio-file additions to this page
2. Introduction to the audio files on this page
3. SOUND FILES PAGE TWO
4. SOUND FILES PAGE THREE
5. Solar-maximum Expeditions: Alberta 2000, Saskatchewan/Alberta 2001
6. Long-Baseline Stereo recordings
7. More Alberta June 1996 solar-minimum recordings
8. More Manitoba Aug. 1996 Solar-minimum Expedition audio

---

Beautiful green and red aurora photographed 13 August 2000 from near Dixonville, Alberta, Canada during my August 2000 stereo VLF recording expedition at around 2.00 a.m. MDT - S. McGreevy

This collection of naturally-occurring ELF/VLF audio recordings (now in MP3 file format) and the spectrograms below were made by Stephen P. McGreevy during 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. This page includes mono audio files recorded from tapes made during VLF recording sessions in Alberta and Manitoba, Canada (1993, 1995, 1996), STEREO recordings made in Waterton Peace Park, Alberta Canada, June 1998, and two additional Canadian Expeditions in 2000 and 2001. Plus, there are recent recordings made from the California desert near and in Death Valley National Park and the Eastern Sierra and Joshua Tree Nat. Park. in the Southeastern California desert, and abroad within Greater London, and the Donegal Coast of Ireland..

Black and white photo of gorgeous aurora resembling a tornado in shape - Manitoba, 26 August 1996, around 0100 local time - S. McGreevy

---

Many audio files on this site and a hundred more are on this CD-r for sale

---

About the audio files on this website:

Earth's Natural ELF-VLF radio signals in the audio-frequency radio spectrum - the radio sounds of the magnetosphere and space-weather - were the first radio signals people had ever heard beginning in the 1880's on telephone lines. They are amazing and beautiful, and the variety to be heard is endless - I encourage everyone to listen to them!

Some of the below (a portion of older files dated pre-2001) MP3 format audio files (128, 96 or 64 kbps) were converted from original source .WAV files of various sample and bit rates and may vary a bit in quality.

Newer MP3-file additons to this website (archives and newer recordings from 2002 to 2005) have been made directly from the original mini-disc or cassette recordings, and are at 128 kbs rate for the best quality for the file sizes, although it is a tad less than the original field-recordings (as some quality-loss is present in compressed-audio-file formats like MP3). Sometimes, MP3 audio compression tends to make the impulse-noise sounds of lightning static sound a bit odd, especially if encoded into the MP3 format at less than 128 kbs rate - otherwise the VLF phenomena is reproduced faithfully).

The several receivers I used to make most of these audio-file recordings were a McGreevy WR-4b unit with a couple of 2 to 3-meter-tall whip verticals attached to my camper/van you see in photos below; hand-held WR-3 receivers of various ages; two cross-azimuth verticaly-hung delta-loops made of several turns of wire - used mainly in Canada for the STEREO recording expeditions (in the summers of 1998, 2000, and 2001) employing a large-loop antenna receiving system design by Stephen Ratzlaff alongside a version of his design adapted for my McGreevy WR-4b receiver. Quite a few recordings are made on hikes using a few versions of the hand-held McGreevy WR-3 receiver.

Many listeners to Natural VLF Radio note how the majority of these recordings of Earth's beautiful Natural VLF Radio sounds closely resemble biological/vocal sounds made by birds, frogs, whales, seals, etc. (or sci-fi sound effects) - you have to hear them to believe the variety and beauty...they are the sounds of "Space Weather"!

---

Latest Audio File Additions:

11 July 2007 - Centennial Flat, Inyo Co., Calif.:

'Whizzer' type whistler (8 sec. / 116 kb) - maybe one occurrence every few minutes, occurred on the morning of wednesday 11 July 2007 at about 1245 ut / 0545 Pacific time - recorded hand-held with WR-3ga/WR-3GX receiver and Sony minidisc recorder.

---

CA/NV Whistler Storms:

whistorm_stereo_mideke_ca22aug90.mp3 (1826 kb / 160 kbps MP3 - 1:33) - recorded near San Simeon, CA at 1605 UTC, 22 Aug. 1990. STEREO using two different long-wires (> 1000 ft. long) and receivers. (INSPIRE RS-3 receivers)

whisstorm_mcg_nv_21aug90_v_vlf.mp3 (1238 kb / 160 kbps MP3 - 1:03) - a whistler storm with chorus and hiss recorded by S. McGreevy near Paradise Valley, (northern) Nevada (north of Winnemucca) 21 Aug. 1990, 1700 ut - the first day of two events 21-22 Aug. 1990. Recorded on McGreevy version of Mideke/INSPIRE RS-3 receiver (predated the McGreevy BBB-4 whip-antenna-receiver by a year or so) with 200 foot longwire.

whistlers_mideke_oct89.mp3 (3138 kb / 160 kbps MP3 - 2:54:) Spectacularly echoing whistlers recorded by Michael Mideke near San Simeon sometime in October 1989.

Eastern Sierra/Owens Valley

1) Two, semi-diffuse 2-hop whistlers preceeded by distinct lightning static pops, 1230 UT, 204 kb, 128 kbps, 13 seconds duration.

2) Two whistlers occurring within 1/4second, at about 1233 UT, 74 kb, 5 sec.

My favorite summertime listening site west of Lone Pine against the Sierra Nevada mtns. - Picture shows the van antennas, the VLF copper-pipe vertical antenna being on the rear of the van on the right. I caught a few whistlers the morning of 06 June 2005.

1) Whistler in heavy static at 1500 UT, 100 kb, 128 kbps, 6 sec.

2) whistler cluster at about 1430 UT, 94 kb, 4.5 sec.

Northern Mojave Desert - Inyo County, Calif.

10/11 Feb 2005 - Lee Flat, Inyo. Co., California recording site Lee Flat (elev 5,900 ft./1800 m) located on the western edge of Death Valley National Park (click link for large photo showing the location: van and antenna, the Inyo mountains with snow to the west, and Joshua Trees nearby)

1) Two different kinds of whistlers occurring close-together - a hissy one and a pure-tone one) after lightning pops occurring at about 2200 pst (0600 ut, 11 Feb 05) 122 KB, 128 kbps, 7 sec.

2) Cluster of weak upward-rising tones (risers) and subtle high-latitude phenomena (at about 0200 ut, 11 Feb 05) 640 KB, 128 kbps, 40 sec.

The pervasive AC grid: Notice the faint AC powerline hum in the two audio file recordings above: the closest large AC powerlines are about 15 miles to the west in the Owens Valley, a small set runs along Calif. State Route 190 some ten miles to the south and southwest, and yet, AC hum is still audible - sometimes from two different grids with a very slight difference in a.c. mains frequencies (0.1 Hz for example)! There are few places within the California deserts as electrically remote and quiet as here - no artificial lights of any kind are visible in this location - perfect also for dark-sky astronomy and other radio reception experimentation and DXing. (approx. coords. 36.5N/117.6W)

1) Whistler after lightning pop 1125z 26 July 2004,76 KB, 96 kbps

2) Cluster of weak whistlers after lightning bolt cluster72 KB, 96 kbps

Whistlers at Point Reyes/Mount Vision - 21 January 2004

1) whistlers_mt_vision_prns_marin_012104_.mp3 958 KB. 128 kbps stream

2) whistlers_mt_vision_prns_marin_012104_1145z.mp3 1182 KB, 128 kbps stream

3) whistlers_mt_vision_prns_marin_012104_1150z.mp3 680 KB, 128 kbps stream

The three MP3 files above are recent January coastal California whister recordings in MP3 file-format above, and were recorded (using a WR-3) during an actual video shoot at dawn and sunrise on the morning of wed. 21 January 2004 atop Mount Vision in the Pt. Reyes National Seashore. There are some bits of the video camera's electronic noise present in the background of portions of these recordings above, albeit quite faint overall.

Southern Death Valley Whistlers

Whistlers recorded in southern death Valley, about 2 miles south of Ashford Junction near the Owlshead Mountains on 02 November 2003 at 0950 UT (1:50 a.m. PST).

1) whistlers_south_dv_02nov03_0950z_dvnp_inyo_ca.mp3 2848 KB, 128 kbs stream

---

Darwin - Realm of Inyo fast-Whistlers

Darwin, California is an old silver-mining town in the plateau between the Owens Valley and the Panamint Valley, just outside of the western boundary of Death Valley National Park. One single powerline serves this tiny but scenic town of about 50 ecclectic people of all kinds. I visited Darwin for a few days between 17-23 September to do some professional recording of musical festivities happening over that period in the tiny hamlet. On Tuesday September 23rd at 7 a.m. local time, there was a scheduled power outage so LADWP crews could install new wooden power poles leading down the Darwin Plateau, passing by Centennial Flat, toward Lone Pine. Shortly after the power-outage ensued, all the hum and buzz of the mains went away. Standing right next to the town's powerlines, I recorded these quite fast-whistlers with one of my hand-held WR-3 Whistler Receivers and an oddly tilting home-made BNC whip antenna attachment about 5 feet long. In this audio segment, there are frequent, possibly 1-hop whistlers transversing the magnetosphere once from lightning storms in the southern hemisphere, but it seems to me that perhaps they have traveled 2-short-hops through the magnetosphere, because I thought that some of them followed obvious lightning static bursts from moonsoonal lightning storms occurring over the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau that morning. SEE PICTURE BELOW!Darwing fast whistlers, 232 kB, 128 kbps MP3 file, about 13 sec.

Steve McGreevy in Darwin, Calif. on 23 Sept. 2003 with WR-3 Receiver recording the fast whistlers in above audio-file

---

1996 British Isles Travels: Donegal Coast (Ireland) and inner-London Whistlers

Amazingly, London has a very quiet power-grid compared to most North American cities - in fact, the clean-ness of the UK power grid is legendary - much of this lack of noise has to do with the fact that longwave (153 to 290 kHz) is used for broadcasting, and noisy appliances tolerated in North America are NOT there (such as SCR-light-dimmers, etc.). The result is one can hear whistlers pretty well within some of the large urban parks within Greater London. Battersea Park in Chelsea is no exception. While visiting Irdial Discs of London in May 1996, one evening around sunset, I walked into nearby Battersea Park with my WR-3 and was delighted to record these fine whistlers. Notice that the AC-hum is lower-pitched - 50 Hz, than in North America (60 Hz):

London Battersea Park Whistlers recorded 10 May 1996 at 9:10 p.m. BST handheld with a WR-3 into my Marantz PMD-212 cassette recorder, somewhere in an open place away from trees north of the football (soccer) playing pitches near the western edge of the park. The varying levels of background hum are from the railway lines from Victoria Station that pass by the western edge of the park. 55 sec., 654 KB, 64 kbps MP3 file.

Society of Earth Lovers

The audio files on this site are for the delight and fascination of everyone visiting this page. Use of them in presentations is encouraged provided 1) credit is given to me, and 2) the URL of this site is provided. Thank you. Stephen P. McGreevy