Messages

16

Part 15 AM and FM Station Operation / Re: 13.56 MHz Antennas

« on: July 16, 2021, 1657 UTC »

I appreciate what you're trying to do.  Problem is, the results that your page calls "flawed" are far closer to the truth than your "correct" ones. What you term an "invalid" conversion factor and a "technical error" are in reality the international standard for EMC compliance measurements, not an error on ANSI's part or the FCC's.  This is pointed out accurately, if somewhat wordily, in a July 11 post on the subject in the LWCA message board.

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: New Programmable 22mb Beacon Kit

« on: July 08, 2021, 1510 UTC »

Excellent idea.  I hope more operators will avail themselves of the opportunity to transmit QRSS3 with this kit, and maybe even to mix QRSS and regular speed CW.

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: NOM NOM 13566.2 CW 1408 UTC 28 Jun 2021

« on: July 02, 2021, 0029 UTC »

Thanks for the quick response, Rob. I know about QSL cards,  and assumed eQSLs were a graphical electronic equivalent. The part I'm most puzzled about is, how do you get one...especially if you don't know the operator.

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: NOM NOM 13566.2 CW 1408 UTC 28 Jun 2021

« on: June 30, 2021, 2029 UTC »

Can someone explain the hows and whys of eQSLs of this sort, please?

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: New beacon SE?

« on: April 22, 2021, 0140 UTC »

Syfr, I wish Paul Harvey would come back and give us "the rest of the story." 

Just wondering if anyone has copied F/SE the past two weekends? I haven't been able to hear it here during that time.

That first weekend was a big puzzle. I asked zeak about his determination of mark versus space because, the first day I copied it, the "F" was distinctly at 13555.120 and the inverse, "SE", was at 13555.290.  The next day, however, things were back exactly as zeak described.  But that was also the last time I heard the signal, so far.

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: New beacon SE?

« on: April 04, 2021, 2140 UTC »

Zeak, you are absolutely right about my seeming two signals being one and the same. This afternoon I was able to tune them both in simultaneously, and despite my earlier doubts they are indeed opposite sides of the same FSK coin, separated by 85 Hz this time.

The fact that "SE" and "F" are Morse mirror images of another was a very strong coincidence, so I wanted to keep an open mind. Most of my earlier objections to the idea can be explained away as aural illusions due to selective fading being HIGHLY selective at very low power levels on 22 meters.  ( If you had heard F fade out last night and leave SE audible at a time when the two were less than 10 Hz apart, you'd likely have had doubts too!  )

My one objection that was not based on an aural illusion was the lack of a long dash denoting the space frequency, which means the operator must intentionally cut the carrier between idents, and does it with such deliberate timing that the mirrored/inverted versions both represent perfectly formed Morse letters.  That in turn raises a couple of questions, though:

1. I wonder why someone would not leave the "space" intact, or at least on for a longer duty cycle, to give the listener a chance to mentally sync up and/or be better able to distinguish whether high or low is intended to be the "mark".

2. How did you make the determination that "mark" is intended to be low?

Thanks again for your reply.

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: New beacon SE?

« on: April 04, 2021, 1553 UTC »

Thanks, zeak, but I suspect we are talking about two or more different signals.

The "SE" and "F" I am hearing both consist of perfectly formed CW elements with no anomalous long dashes, as would be expected if one of them were the "space" segment of an FSK signal.  The two I'm hearing also transmit at slightly different rates, with the "on" intervals overlapping at times. The two signals I'm hearing also faded at different times, even late in the day when they were less than 10 Hz apart; and a spectral view of the keyed carriers shows the SE signal to drift more in frequency during keying than the F signal does.  Additionally, F has been copied here in years past, but this is the first time for SE.  For those reasons, I think the two I am copying probably originate from different sources.

However, I do not discount your observation.  This afternoon, I will run an extra instance of Argo and see if I too can snag an FSK signal with the parameters you mentioned, and also visit the Maui KiwiSDR.

23

22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: New beacon SE?

« on: April 04, 2021, 0107 UTC »

SE showed up again late this morning at the same spot, but by late afternoon had changed to 13555.120 for some reason, just a few Hz from the (also unknown, but seasonally transient in most years) beacon F.

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / New beacon SE?

« on: April 02, 2021, 2344 UTC »

Who and where is HiFER SE, heard here in the middle of the country this afternoon on 13555.285 kHz?

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: KAH 13566.08 0030 19 JUN 2020

« on: June 27, 2020, 1658 UTC »

13560.0 was the last update from the operator back during the winter, after the beacon was physically relocated temporarily. (Miraculously, he actually received a report on that noisy frequency, from a relatively quiet spot in Nova Scotia.)  He may have moved it back to the lake QTH, or at least nearer the original frequency.  The list will soon be updated based on these recent reports.

26

22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: WSPR on 22 Meters?

« on: May 13, 2020, 1912 UTC »

WSPR is a very viable option for 22 meters, Alex. as a search of the LWCA.org message board would reveal. It is roughly equivalent in detection efficiency to QRSS3, which is the "gold standard" for the band, but has greater data throughput per minute.

There are currently two stations active in that mode, K3SIW and K5LVB, another that uses WSPR intermittently (WA1EDJ), and a Canadian who uses the call J1LPB has been on in the past but hasn't been reported in quite some time.  All the currently and recently active WSPR stations employ an Ultimate 3s as the transmitter, with the output stage modified and/or an RF attenuator at the output to get down to the necessary power level.  There's a WSPR test generator kit being sold (I forget the name of it) that has been discussed in some forums which apparently has a suitable output. It's popular for 30 meter ham beacons, although I'm not aware of anyone actually using it on 22 m.

But the very first WSPR on the HiFER band was seven years ago from Jim Vander Maaten (former beacon ESA), who was generating it with a Raspberry Pi that he also used on 30 and 20 meters, if I recall.  He only ran it on 22 for something like a day and a half, unfortunately. During that time I could see it on an Argo screen, but I wasn't familiar enough with the WSPR decoder software back then to set it up for nonstandard off-ham-band frequencies. By the time I got the hang of it, he had abandoned 22 meters, so I had to wait a few more years until K3SIW put his WSPR beacon on the air. The article about the R-Pi that Jim mentioned back then is still on the Web:
http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2013/03/wow-raspberry-pi-as-rf-transmitter.html

As for other "new fangled" digital modes suitable for QSOs, Dave, it would sure be great to experiment!  PSK-31 has been tried, but its bandwidth was too large to be effective in this band, except locally. Slower versions of JT mode would probably be at least as effective as WSPR. But one significant problem is that no one currently offers a suitable exciter for real-time keyboard to keyboard communication on this band. So far, all the available and/or adaptable kits have been intended for beaconing, meaning they have to be reprogrammed each time the outgoing message changes.

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: 22m Beacons 15 Apr 2020

« on: April 30, 2020, 1731 UTC »

Followup on AA8HS: I found that ~13566 was the frequency he originally started out on, but in August of 2018 the signal was heard by a reliable reporter on the lower frequency, so that's why it was showing that way in the list. Apparently he's back on or near the original spot now. The list should be updated again some time this weekend.

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: 22m Beacons 15 Apr 2020

« on: April 30, 2020, 1704 UTC »

Checked the tapes and AA8HS was lower in frequency than ABBY. The published freqs on lwca.org show about 4kc but didn't sound that far on the DX-150.

Thanks very much. I expect he's moved but didn't update the listing. I'll see if we can get that changed.

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: 22m Beacons 15 Apr 2020

« on: April 30, 2020, 0113 UTC »

Scott, could you tell from the pitch of the audio whether AA8HS was above or below ABBY in frequency?

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22 Meter Band HiFER Beacons / Re: Some Grabs from Sweden / grabber online

« on: March 14, 2020, 1728 UTC »

It appears you can see EH from New Jersey fairly regularly at this time of day. I'd bet that as the sun gets higher in the sky over the coming weeks, you will observe more US and Canadian stations in that segment, too.