blinky 5157.60

[chucks]

08/31/10 0100z
no codar on 5157.60 tonight, something different for a change.
I can hear Blinky in and out of the noise here, not real strong.
I am amazed that this beacon is still operating, there is no one to
take care of it at this point. It has been operating for sometime
now, a testament to the builder.

Chuck

[BeaconBuff]

I was listening on 5157 two nights ago, figuring that being in FL it should be an easy catch--if not exactly 'DX'--and heard a signal in and out of the noise that sounded like a repeating, frequency-swept swooping/pulsing sound with a fast sweep rate, like "choop, choop, choop..." kind of like a police siren as heard from a great distance, or another way of putting it, somewhat like a dripping faucet, repeated at about 1 or 2 Hz. Was this indeed 'Blinky' I was hearing?

[chucks]

most likely what you were hearing was the codar, ocean surface radar. It's a real pain and now it's covering
more of the lower bands. Blinky is a cw dasher and off the top of my head right now I can't remember the rep
rate. I am finding that after midnight local time the codar goes away here and I don't know why because you would think that they would still want readings after midnight, oh well I'm glad to see it go away for awhile anyway.
I use SPECTRAN to watch for the beacons as well as the ears in headphones, sometimes you just can't beat the old brain to dig things out of the noise.

Chuck

[WrongwayCorrigan]

There is a discussion of CODAR in this thread, along with some recordings you can use for comparison.

http://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,3294.0.html