New beacon SE?

[Prairiedog]

Who and where is HiFER SE, heard here in the middle of the country this afternoon on 13555.285 kHz?

[Prairiedog]

SE showed up again late this morning at the same spot, but by late afternoon had changed to 13555.120 for some reason, just a few Hz from the (also unknown, but seasonally transient in most years) beacon F.

[zeak]

It appears the signal you mention at 13555.120 is the “Mark” portion of an FSK signal with the “Space” at 13555.290 as monitored  from this location at1705Z, 3  April.

Later in the day when this signal was again monitored from this location, after 2000Z it was 459 with deep fades and at that same time it was noticed the FSK shift had changed from about 170Hz to approximately 85Hz with a “Mark” of 13555.120 and a “Space” of 13555.205. The FSK signal is in fact sending a “F” in FSK Morse at about a 4 second rate.

At 0234Z (4 April), the same signal was again heard on the KiwiSDR at AI6VN/KH6, Kahaluloa, Maui  (http://kiwisdr.robinett.us:8073/), 579 with mild QSB.

Receiver KiwiSDR
Ant: 80m dipole at 15m
location:  DM12

[Prairiedog]

Thanks, zeak, but I suspect we are talking about two or more different signals.

The "SE" and "F" I am hearing both consist of perfectly formed CW elements with no anomalous long dashes, as would be expected if one of them were the "space" segment of an FSK signal.  The two I'm hearing also transmit at slightly different rates, with the "on" intervals overlapping at times. The two signals I'm hearing also faded at different times, even late in the day when they were less than 10 Hz apart; and a spectral view of the keyed carriers shows the SE signal to drift more in frequency during keying than the F signal does.  Additionally, F has been copied here in years past, but this is the first time for SE.  For those reasons, I think the two I am copying probably originate from different sources.

However, I do not discount your observation.  This afternoon, I will run an extra instance of Argo and see if I too can snag an FSK signal with the parameters you mentioned, and also visit the Maui KiwiSDR.

[Prairiedog]

Zeak, you are absolutely right about my seeming two signals being one and the same. This afternoon I was able to tune them both in simultaneously, and despite my earlier doubts they are indeed opposite sides of the same FSK coin, separated by 85 Hz this time.

The fact that "SE" and "F" are Morse mirror images of another was a very strong coincidence, so I wanted to keep an open mind. Most of my earlier objections to the idea can be explained away as aural illusions due to selective fading being HIGHLY selective at very low power levels on 22 meters.  ( If you had heard F fade out last night and leave SE audible at a time when the two were less than 10 Hz apart, you'd likely have had doubts too!  )

My one objection that was not based on an aural illusion was the lack of a long dash denoting the space frequency, which means the operator must intentionally cut the carrier between idents, and does it with such deliberate timing that the mirrored/inverted versions both represent perfectly formed Morse letters.  That in turn raises a couple of questions, though:

1. I wonder why someone would not leave the "space" intact, or at least on for a longer duty cycle, to give the listener a chance to mentally sync up and/or be better able to distinguish whether high or low is intended to be the "mark".

2. How did you make the determination that "mark" is intended to be low?

Thanks again for your reply.

[zeak]

Prairiedog,

Yes, its difficult to tag the results from intercepts like FSK , 4FSK  and PSK. Really, it was just lucky catching “F” from Hawaii last night ~0200Z. I’d been following the signal with the sun and through skip zones over the last couple of days and Hawaii must have been the optimum path last night between TX and RX allowing a clear visual picture of the Mark/Space relationship without QSB and a good SNR from the Hawaiian KiwiSDR.


How did you make the determination that "mark" is intended to be low?

Comment Zeak
I believe the relationship between “Mark” and  “Space” is an international standard for RTTY and telecommunications and the same holds true for QRSS FSKCW where the lower frequency is “key up” and the higher frequency is “key down”, with the key-up frequency being the official frequency of record. F-beacon seemed to be following the Farnsworth/Morse as far as the dot/dash ratio and I’ve been looking for CWFSK signals for the last few months, so F-Beacon was a quick ID.

Thanks for the feedback Prairiedog, unfortunately I did not pick up the F-beacon today at all starting at 1300Z (just prior to sunrise) through this writing at 2257Z, but possibly on the Hiwiian Kiwi after 0100Z.

Zeak,

[syfr]

This is (as Paul Harvey would say)  "a strange!"

There's some discussion on the LWCA website about this one.

[Prairiedog]

Syfr, I wish Paul Harvey would come back and give us "the rest of the story." 

Just wondering if anyone has copied F/SE the past two weekends? I haven't been able to hear it here during that time.

That first weekend was a big puzzle. I asked zeak about his determination of mark versus space because, the first day I copied it, the "F" was distinctly at 13555.120 and the inverse, "SE", was at 13555.290.  The next day, however, things were back exactly as zeak described.  But that was also the last time I heard the signal, so far.

[zeak]

Nothing heard here either Prairiedog, even with sampling several KiwiSdr sites, nothing. However, propagation has been crazy (good) for the lower frequencies and not so good for the higher frequencies for the last several days.

Receiver KiwiSDR
Ant: 80m dipole at 15m
location:  DM12