14398.4 Beacon

[MegatonRange]

14398.4 CW Sending temperature & battery condition today at 1601 UTC. Heard last week under the SHARES national net (14396.5 USB) on Wednesday.

[MegatonRange]

OK, a correction, I'm also seeing this on 7199.2 (half of 14398.4) in CW mode. It's a much stronger signal there compared to 14398.4. The station is sending message number, battery voltage & temperature at the top of each hour & 30 minutes after. I'm not sure this should actually be called a beacon, so if the thread should be moved, have at it. BTW, I'm in southcentral KY & I'm using a Wellbrook ALA1530LNP NA loop antenna & a RFSpace CloudSDR.

[Teotwaki]

If it is not sending a Ham call sign as part of the message I guess we can call it a pirate beacon. I'll try to catch it tomorrow using the home radios and some SDRs. Do you have a recording or a full transcription of the messages? What is the speed of the CW?


Thanks!

[MegatonRange]

If it is not sending a Ham call sign as part of the message I guess we can call it a pirate beacon. I'll try to catch it tomorrow using the home radios and some SDRs. Do you have a recording or a full transcription of the messages? What is the speed of the CW?

---
Can't recall the WPM right off. The following is from a poster on UDXF, who had a much better signal than me:

Just copied the 3/6/2025, 17:30, 7199.2 CW message:
Very strong here in Mass.

; ; ; MESSAGE NUMBER 615,
TEMPERATURE 6,
BATTERY 13.2 ARMED PER 114,
TEMP 1 2.3,
TEMP 2 0.6,
TEMP 3 6.1,
UPTIME 475.1
HR
(End of transmission)

[MegatonRange]

Looks to be around 13 WPM. And as of 1700 UTC today, both 7199.2 & 14398.4 are still active. The 14 MHz station sometimes sends at times the 7 MHz doesn't, so these must be two separate stations, although at times, they both send the same message, too.

[Teotwaki]

Maybe they are ham 40M & 20M propagation beacons but not following the Amateur Radio rules.

Based on that message example plus transmitting twice an hour, divide message count of 615 by 48 and that would be almost 13 days of operation at that time.