Hey, good to see you.
I'm in upstate South Carolina, and just getting rolling in these low-power beacons, myself.
Radio here is an Icom IC-718, with a 400-foot longwire antenna up about 40 feet in the trees. My wire has a pretty well-pronounced north-south pattern to it, so I get Blinky quite well much of the time. CO makes the trip out this way pretty well; you'll want to keep an ear on that one, as it carries messages from time to time.
Many of these low-power beacons push around 200 milliwatts, though the exact output often depends on the construction, transistor choice, and how sunny it happens to be at their location that day, as many of them are solar powered.
Here in the upstate area, I have often heard OK, MO, Blinky, Pike 78, and CO. I've heard others on and off, depending largely on propagation and weather, both here and at the TX sites. There are some interesting-sounding ones out there in the desert - temperature and wind-reporting beacons etc., but I haven't yet been able to catch any of them, likely due to a combination of geography, skip distance, and my wire's directionality. I keep trying though; I know it's just a matter of time before everything lines up just right and one of them comes crawling out of the static to me.
Most of the active beacons are located in the western US, with relatively few here on the east coast, though I have heard some rumors that there are people working on addressing that issue.
Good to meet you - I'm looking forward to reading your logs, and seeing which ones you can catch that I haven't yet.
Topic: First beacon logs (Read 2467 times)