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Loggings => 22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons => Topic started by: K3ZRT on February 15, 2020, 0356 UTC

Title: YCPA 13567
Post by: K3ZRT on February 15, 2020, 0356 UTC
Greetings all,

Just finished putting together a Black Cat Systems 22m beacon.

It is currently turned pretty low on the output power until I can get it on a scope, and grab a field strength meter from the club.

The beacon is currently tuned to 13567 but may fluctuate with temperature, etc, standard crystal stuff.

It is fed into a 1/2 wave dipole roughly 10' up for now, broadsides facing NE-SW. Beacon location is York County, Pennsylvania (hence the call) FM19rx grid ~400' asl)

Happy hunting!

73 de K3ZRT
Title: Re: YCPA 13567
Post by: kc3gfz on February 15, 2020, 1307 UTC
Hello there,

Nice to see another beacon in Pennsylvania. Grid FN00 Allegheny County. My beacon Abby is running around 135564.9 frequency change from 13566.9 due to changes in components. Today try to run 100% solar.

Have fun.
Title: Re: YCPA 13567
Post by: K3ZRT on February 15, 2020, 2320 UTC
Hello there,

Nice to see another beacon in Pennsylvania. Grid FN00 Allegheny County. My beacon Abby is running around 135564.9 frequency change from 13566.9 due to changes in components. Today try to run 100% solar.

Have fun.

Awesome! I saw your posting for Abby and have been tuning in hope to catch it. I am also quite curious of your solar experiment. I have plans drawn to feed mine with solar as well, using series 18650 batteries to keep it operational at night with hopeful charging from the solar cells as well.

Eventually I may expand to a more robust system, multiple beacon boards, different bands, controlled based on time and via an arduino. Almost like NCDXF, but single location. This is definitely a few months out yet. I am still learning this building stuff, tried to build my own, failed but learned where I failed based off the 22m kit, so it's back to more experimentation :D.

I hope to catch Abby when everything aligns perfectly for me to do so :)

73 de K3ZRT
Title: Re: YCPA 13567
Post by: kc3gfz on February 17, 2020, 1620 UTC
I moved it back to battery power for now. Frequency 13.566.8/9. If you are considering running a solar panel with the black cat make sure you have something around 400kohm resister in C4, that will allow solar panel to wake up on its own the next day without covering the panel with hand to get it started back up. I was going to go 100% solar but find that probably a battery/solar combo would work better. Another thing would be to keep the 5v regulator chip in and get a 6-12v panel and try that without battery. I use 3aa 1.5v energizer lithium and they will run beacon for about 18 days 24/7. For the time being, expensive  I will buy 1.5v rechargeable lithium cells. This will be cost effective for me and I’ll only need to charge them twice a month.
Title: Re: YCPA 13567
Post by: kc3gfz on February 17, 2020, 1623 UTC
I forgot to say 450k to like 4meg ohm resistor should accomplish the job of you consider using solar or have Issues with having the beacon start back up after changing batteries.
Title: Re: YCPA 13567
Post by: Prairiedog on February 18, 2020, 0753 UTC
"around 135564.9 frequency"

Chris, it looks like maybe there's an extra digit in there somewhere, or else a misplaced decimal. What is the correct current frequency of ABBY, please?
Title: Re: YCPA 13567
Post by: kc3gfz on February 18, 2020, 1408 UTC
Sorry 13566.9
Title: Re: YCPA 13567
Post by: kc3gfz on February 26, 2020, 2043 UTC
Abby Frequency is at 13566.60