HFU HF Underground
Loggings => HF Beacons => Topic started by: circuitmike on February 27, 2023, 0241 UTC
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I'm not sure if this is a beacon or something else, but I'm hearing a faint signal on and around 4095.38 that transmits CW for a while, then switches to FSK for a bit, then some silence, and repeat. It's too faint and my CW skills are too crappy for me to decode what's being transmitted. Anyone know what this is?
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OK, I think I got all excited about nothing. I've tried a bunch of KiwiSDRs and the signal is roughly equally weak all up and down the east coast. It's much stronger in Europe - I got a great signal in Finland. I'd still love to know what it is, but it's probably not a beacon.
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Good copy on this Fin Kiwi- Seems to be weather in morse.
http://sdxl-loh.ddns.net:8073/?f=4095.378cwnz14
Some fading but it does identify as a beacon and it's sending the time and shift and baud rate of RTTY info in its preamble. It's machine sent code but cadence is odd to my ear.
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it is Common And Precious beacon
FSK decode 2023-02-28 0055 UTC:
PYRYRYRYRY
COMMON AND PRECIOUS BEACON - 2ND GENERATION (SOFTWARE 1.0 BETW).
CW AND RTTY (170HZ SHIFT 50 BAUD 2 STOP BITS).
BASE LOADED 5M VERTICAL WITH CAPACITY HAT, 35M ABOVE GROUND.
50W RF, LOCATED IN JO62.
24/7 OPERATION.
UBATT: (GRID)
TEMPERATURE: 1.0C
HUMIDITY: '6.5RH
MESSAGE END
it have around 135Hz shift, not 170 as stated in the message
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Very cool, thanks! I thought the FSK shift seemed weirdly narrow.
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Hey,
Common and Precious 5 Wiki Page (https://www.hfunderground.com/wiki/Common_and_Precious_5)
It's been (quite) a while. The CaP projects seem to lay dormant. Yes and no. It's complicated.
I had issues with vandalism and removed all beacons, which were in the same location. I wanted to redo 'em anyway. Different PSUs and new software that could not only run static CW but dynamic CW (with Telemetry) and also RTTY. I wish I had the time at hand like during childhood. Life of an adult rarely offers free time. Sigh.
The new software was finished in winter 2020. Then Covid-19 struck. Work became more demanding (many people sick) and we had curfews. But Corona changed a lot more. Turns out a lot of locations, that lay domant for years, were suddenly sold. The economy was good. Investors had plans. Then Russia invaded the Ukraine and the economy became tricky, thus investors paused investments and projects.
Often those old buildings get torn down while no construction takes place. I ran into police officers in civil clothes once on a location and had a talk. More and more Vlogs (Video Blogs) come up on social media. More and more often an address and coordinates are plainly given away. Not like before, when such was a no-go. Which leads to an ever increasing traffic on lost objects. And with that comes more and more vandalism. The policemen in context were checking for people that may set a fire (which had happened before to the location in context). Thus, to safe the expenses for securing an object and having seurity check frequently, objects get demolished even when there's no actual plan for re-using the areal.
Locations that are deserted, not known to anyone, and have power are hard to find by now. Using Solar is also tricky due to vanalism. There are lcoation outside the city. But most require at least a 30-45 mins drive by car (one way). That requires additional time and I think, from an ecological point of view, it's also not responsible.
I've to see what I'll make out of all this.
As for Common and Precious 5, this one, it's planned to get it on air this week again. The Antenna was installed yesterday. I'll just try my luck on this location despite it being frequently visited by people. It's large enough so my stuff may not get noticed between everything else that's on the roof. But security stopped visiting some weeks ago, thus I expect demolition works to start sooner or later.
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Thanks so much for the info! I'm really sorry to hear that people are vandalizing your work. I love that I was able to receive this beacon from across the Atlantic. I hope you have better luck if you choose to continue to do this great work.
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01:45 UTC 09 AUG 2023 - Good readable in CW mode from the University of Twente Wide-band WebSDR;
01:52 UTC - Switched to RTTY mode;
01:53 UTC - Back to CW.
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For Kiwis that have updated to software version v1.630 (most of them by now) I have added entries to the community DX label database for this beacon. Press the backslash ("\") key until the frequency scale shows "database: community" as shown in the attached image (red arrow on left). Then zoom in to 4095 kHz to see the labels.
There are two labels. Clicking on them will start the Kiwi CW or FSK decoder extensions preset for the beacon parameters. The Kiwi CW decoder is not so good. It requires a high SNR to function at all. The FSK decoder is pretty good though. As shown most of the FSK decodes fine. This was from a Kiwi in Sweden at 00:00Z. The right side of the labels have a clickable link that takes you to the HFU Wiki for the beacon.
(http://kiwisdr.com/files/Beacon_C&P5_4095_kHz_FSK_1280px.png)