HFU HF Underground
Loggings => HF Beacons => Topic started by: Strange Beacons on April 11, 2014, 1924 UTC
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I have become very interested in amateur beacons and the propagation of beacon signals.
I have virtually no electronic building experience. I am interested in hearing from anyone who can advise me as to whether building a simple beacon would be too complex of a project for a person who has little to no experience?
And, if that is the case, whether it would be possible to purchase a pre-built beacon from someone, or somewhere?
Thank you.
Edit/Update: I posted this same query on another radio-related forum and got responses, in case anyone else is wondering about the answer to this question. People recommended some of the following:
RaspberryPi, which has a variety of uses, including being able to transmit via Software Defined Radio setups:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
Purchasing something called a QRSS Transmitter Kit (I can supply the link, if anyone wants to see it).
And, a ready-made transmitter kit called OpenBeacon, the description of which is as follows: "an open source crystal-controlled QRPp beacon transmitter kit which can output a variety of slow-speed modes, including QRSS, DFCW, and Sequential Multi-tone Hellschreiber. It is configured via USB port, so there are no jumpers to set and you can easily adjust all of the operating parameters via command line. Once configuration is complete, OpenBeacon may be removed from the PC and operate stand-alone."
Cheers.
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Nice stuff
http://www.etherkit.com/transmitters/openbeacon.html
https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/tag/qrss-transmitter-kit/
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If you can handle simple soldering you could build something like a Ramseys QRP transmitter kit. No electronics knowledge is required at all, they guide you step-by-step through the process of building the kit. Basically if you can solder and follow instructions like “take the red/white/green resistor and insert it into the 2 holes marked R2” you can build the kits.
This would end up being a traditional CW beacon with about half a Watt of output or a little more. The kits are band specific, and ship with crystals for normal QRP frequencies, but you can substitute other crystals and put them on a wide range of frequencies. For example, if a person were so inclined, the 80 meter kit would easily go into the 4096 kHz pirate beacon area.
Of course then you would need a simple keyer to key the transmitter. There are several kits for that on the market, or you could build a simple dasher circuit if that was the type of beacon you wanted.
A bit more on the “figure things out yourself” side would be using something like the AD9850 DDS (sold on Ebay for $8 no shipping, 0 to 40 MHz range) and drive it with an Arduino or similar device. The electronics are very basic to hook up, but the Arduino would have to be programmed. This combination would get you about 1 mW output, but a simple transistor amplifier could bump that up to whatever level you wanted.
T!
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Thanks for this, Token. The Ramsey QRP transmitter kit is pretty much exactly what I am looking for. (With my limited knowledge of how radio works, it is sometimes hard for me to know how to explain certain things that I'm interested in).
I've never really done much soldering work, but have a steady hand and an inquisitive mind. Again, thanks.
If you can handle simple soldering you could build something like a Ramseys QRP transmitter kit. No electronics knowledge is required at all, they guide you step-by-step through the process of building the kit. Basically if you can solder and follow instructions like “take the red/white/green resistor and insert it into the 2 holes marked R2” you can build the kits.
This would end up being a traditional CW beacon with about half a Watt of output or a little more. The kits are band specific, and ship with crystals for normal QRP frequencies, but you can substitute other crystals and put them on a wide range of frequencies. For example, if a person were so inclined, the 80 meter kit would easily go into the 4096 kHz pirate beacon area.
Of course then you would need a simple keyer to key the transmitter. There are several kits for that on the market, or you could build a simple dasher circuit if that was the type of beacon you wanted.
A bit more on the “figure things out yourself” side would be using something like the AD9850 DDS (sold on Ebay for $8 no shipping, 0 to 40 MHz range) and drive it with an Arduino or similar device. The electronics are very basic to hook up, but the Arduino would have to be programmed. This combination would get you about 1 mW output, but a simple transistor amplifier could bump that up to whatever level you wanted.
T!
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Thanks for your reply and for the links!
Nice stuff
http://www.etherkit.com/transmitters/openbeacon.html
https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/tag/qrss-transmitter-kit/