HFU HF Underground

Loggings => Longwave Loggings => Topic started by: Looking-Glass on April 09, 2019, 1144 UTC

Title: 137KHz beacon (experimental licence permit) from Australia...
Post by: Looking-Glass on April 09, 2019, 1144 UTC
For those serious Low Band DXers here is one to look out for, quite a challenge for the experienced diehard low bander.

As for me, I have yet to hear it this way, have it in the memory bank and check from time to time, storm noise makes the going hard down there.

Frequency:  137.444KHz

Call sign:     VK4RBC

Location:     Caboolture, Queensland, Australia

Grid Sq:      QG62lw

Mode:        WSPR  (GH00FD) plus CW ident.

Power:       1.0w EIRP

Antenna:   500m long at 40m elevation.

Reports:    VK4RBC via QRZ

Good luck, and be sure to post here if you chance upon it... ;D

Title: Re: 137KHz beacon (experimental licence permit) from Australia...
Post by: Pigmeat on April 12, 2019, 1957 UTC
Somewhere in that pile of "Monitoring Time's" Chis put up, there is a schematic and and layout for an etched board for an 137 KHz transmitter. It was both CW and SSB, but due to US regs it could only legally output a 10th of a watt into a fifty ft. long antenna. It seems to me it was from the first decade of this century.

However, the guy who wrote the article and designed the tx had handy instructions on what needed to be done to push it to one watt in countries where power and antenna restrictions weren't as tight. It reminded me a bit of the instructions they used put on cans of malt extract here during Prohibition, "For food production only. Do not add hot water, sugar, and yeast."