HFU HF Underground

Loggings => HF Beacons => Topic started by: beaconman on December 11, 2009, 1550 UTC

Title: Experimental Beacon on 26.600.0kHz
Post by: beaconman on December 11, 2009, 1550 UTC
Guys I got this rouge e mail on this beacon this morning...lets remember to give a listen for it...

"the frequency should be right on 26.600MHz. It sends out very short dits at a rate of about 209 per minute. I can hear it now at my friend's house about 7.7 miles away from the hillside where it is hidden. I am estimating the TX power to be somewhere around 100mw, but I am not immediately certain how to calculate the power for an approximately  3.2v square wave into a1/2 wave dipole. As an experiment and to keep things simple, it is powered solely on 4 D-cells in series parallel. I will see how long it lasts, but I am hoping it is more than a few weeks."
Title: Re: Experimental Beacon on 26.600.0kHz
Post by: Seamus on December 11, 2009, 2036 UTC
There's a chance that I might be getting the thinest shred of signal from this one.
I have nothing by ear, and nothing on the spectrogram running normally, but I DO have a trace of higher density on the waterfall right around that frequency if I slow down the display to sort of "accumulate" the readings into a more visible form.  It's just barely there, and since I can't make it out by ear - even with headphones and filtering - I can't tell if it's a pulsed signal or a stray harmonic of something, but it does move up and down the spectrum normally as I tune, so it's just possible that I may possibly be hearing the faintest trace of it.

(http://www.rthtg.net/beacons/possible_trace.jpg)

location:  upstate South Carolina
radio:  Icom IC-718
antenna:  400-foot longwire @ 40 feet