HFU HF Underground
Loggings => HF Beacons => Topic started by: BoomboxDX on June 05, 2024, 1938 UTC
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After reading through the loggings here, I actually tried to pick up the sound of one of these beacons early this a.m., just after midnight PDT. I heard a 'whoop whoop whoop whoop' noise (on SSB) on 4096 kHz, 00740-0745 UTC, and then some CW, including what may have been a "W", but there was a lot of fading, with the overall signal strength less than S1 on a scale of S1-S5.
It was on my Radio Shack 200629 (ATS 505) and 25-30 ft. indoor, second story wire.
Pretty cool to hear, either way. I'd tried for some of these beacons years ago and came up with nothing.
(Edit: posted the wrong radio used by mistake)
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Last night I heard the Desert Whooper again, this time on both my Radio Shack 200629 and Panasonic RF-B45, off the same indoor 25 ft wire. There was 1-2 S units of difference between the radios, with the Panasonic naturally bringing the 'whoop whoop whoop whoop' noises in stronger. I heard the DW identifier, and parts of two separate data transmissions in CW, but the fading kept me from reading it all.
Pretty cool to hear. At 4:20 a.m. local time, 1120 UTC, June 6th.
Glad that whoever put this one up on the air did it. So cool to hear such noises on HF.
I noticed with my Panasonic that if you tune to one side of the signal, the whoops go up, and if you tune to the other side, the whoops start high and go down.
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Nice! I think the first beacon that I ever heard was one in Arizona that sent in Morse code the letters TMP and then a 2 digit temperature reading. For DW if you look at the signal on a waterfall display you'll see that the whoop starts low and sweeps high. I'm not sure how your radio is built but it's circuit design is what makes the whoops seem to change when you tune high or low. It can be a useful technique for pulling weak signals to a point that makes it easier for your ears to detect.
If your radios can switch to a CW mode the narrower bandwidth can help a lot. I maintain a list of active beacons here
https://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,9478.0.html
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PS: at the beginning of the DW thread they mention eQSL cards
https://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,85047.0.html
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Nice! I think the first beacon that I ever heard was one in Arizona that sent in Morse code the letters TMP and then a 2 digit temperature reading. For DW if you look at the signal on a waterfall display you'll see that the whoop starts low and sweeps high. I'm not sure how your radio is built but it's circuit design is what makes the whoops seem to change when you tune high or low. It can be a useful technique for pulling weak signals to a point that makes it easier for your ears to detect.
If your radios can switch to a CW mode the narrower bandwidth can help a lot. I maintain a list of active beacons here
https://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,9478.0.html
Thanks for that info!
Both of my radios -- actually, 3 of them, the Panasonic RF-B45, Radio Shack 200629, and DX-390, are basically a BFO, so you can tune to either side of an SSB signal and it will pick it up differently than a real, USB/LSB, Sideband decoder (like in my DX-398 has -- haven't been using it lately because I'm out of AA's). It's kind of like tuning into a Codar with a regular BFO instead of an actual USB/LSB decoder. The pitch shifting reverses when you tune through it using a BFO.
The 'whooping' going from high pitch to lower pitch on the Desert Whooper sounds really haunting.
But yeah, I understand, it's set to go from low to high. I could see that on one of the waterfall pics posted on the DW thread here.
Hunting these low power beacons is pretty cool.