Annular Solar Eclipse 2023: recordings of the entire medium-wave AM broadcast band from Victoria, BC, Canada, Part 1

recorded by Nick Hall-Patch, VE7DXR

Grid square of location recorded:  CN88ik

Maximum obscuration of the sun was 79% at 1620UT on 14 October 2023.  

These data files are recordings of the entire medium wave broadcast band (535-1705kHz) made during the annular solar eclipse of 14 October 2024 from 1507UT to 1739UT from Victoria, BC, Canada.  They are part of a set of such recordings made from 13 October 1230UT to 15 October 1730UT             

Data Quality:  There is a gap in the recorded data 14 October from 1624 to 1638UT.  (Another SDR using a co-located antenna with a similar directional pattern was recording through that time period.  That data can be referenced at “Annular Solar Eclipse 2023: recordings of the entire medium-wave AM broadcast band from Victoria, BC, Canada, Part 3”.)    There was local electrical noise around 1675kHz and drifting during eclipse period, likely at other times as well.  There were CFAX-1070 spurious carriers found on these channels:   530, 540, 1410, 1480 1510, 1540, 1590, 1620, 1670 and 1700 kHz.  

Data files are .wav format, but the archived files are .zip, with about ten .wav files packaged together in each .zip file, using the prefix "VE7DXR-Victoria-SmallLoop-wideband_454_1787kHz_ ".  As the total files recorded during the solar eclipse exceeded the Zenodo 50GB limit, the remainder of the dataset is found in "Annular Solar Eclipse 2023: recordings of the entire medium-wave AM broadcast band from Victoria, BC, Canada, Part 2” and “Annular Solar Eclipse 2023: recordings of the entire medium-wave AM broadcast band from Victoria, BC, Canada, Part 3”.

The recordings not included here or in Parts 2 or 3 are available to provide reference data for the eclipse recordings.  Please contact HamSCI at [e-mail] if you require this data. 

Antenna:  1.4m square copper pipe loop, oriented north-south; ALA1530LN amplifier, serial number 1960 

Receiver:  RFSpace SDR-IP, 0dB front end attenuation, with a notch filter in the antenna feed line providing ~25dB attenuation at 1070kHz (local broadcaster's frequency). IQ files with a center frequency of 1120kHz, with 1333kHz wide passband, were recorded using SpectraVue v3.39 software.  The SDR-IP was locked to 10MHz provided by a Trimble Thunderbolt GPS Disciplined Clock .   Computer time accuracy was determined by Windows NTP server.