When there is too much gain on VLF SID Receiver!

I am grateful to the help of Andrew Thomas yesterday for helping me to tune my very low frequency (VLF) radio receiver, which I use to detect solar flares hitting the atmosphere of Earth, where they produce Sudden Ionospheric Disturbances (SIDs).

My receiver was purchased many years ago from the UK Radio Astronomy Association (UKRAA) – initially it worked well but has been sat on the shelf unused for years and the tuning has gone off.

With Andrew’s help, I tuned the receiver and today suffered the problem that a SID has caused the signal to saturate the receiver (hit the top of the graph and produce horizontal line) – so I have now adjusted the gain on the receiver to bring the signal down – I will need to wait to see whether this is correct amount to give good SID traces without saturation.

Andy