Beep every 2 seconds 13560 Khz

[ka1iic]

Another one:

13560 khz 1545 utc 02/12/2014  599 signal off at 1554 utc

Having 2 receivers going at once helps :-) Once upon a time I used 6 receivers at once... all tube rigs... you should have seen my light bill :-)

73 Vince
KA1IIC

[Token]

13560 kHz is smack dead center of one of the HF ISM bands.  This means there is no telling what kind of signal you might here there, but most of them are going to beep, boop, tweet, or trill, and most are not meant for human consumption.  What I am trying to say is that this is unlikely to be an HF beacon of any type, and chances are you will never find out the source with any confidence.

T!

[cmradio]

Could be a HiFER:

http://lwca.org/sitepage/part15/beaconsmfhf.html

Peace!

[BoomboxDX]

Thanks for posting the link to that list, Cmradio. Very cool. Will have to listen for some of those.

[Token]

Could be a HiFER:

http://lwca.org/sitepage/part15/beaconsmfhf.html

Peace!

I think none of those are dead on 13560 kHz because of the noise of ISM devices on that freq.  Notice they all give 13560 kHz a bit of a guard band, if they were on 13560 they would probably be buried.

Just a thought.

T!

[ka1iic]

Token,

Sorry for taking so long on the reply but here are the sound files for both of these intercepts:

2 second beep:

http://vincewerber.org/swl/2secbeep-13560-02-12-14.mp3

And the 6 second beep:

http://vincewerber.org/swl/6secbeep-13874khz-1541utc-02-12-14.mp3

both are recorded in the USB mode (ie real frequency read out) and not CW.

I hope this is helpful...

73 Vince
ka1iic

[Token]

Token,

Sorry for taking so long on the reply but here are the sound files for both of these intercepts:

2 second beep:

http://vincewerber.org/swl/2secbeep-13560-02-12-14.mp3

And the 6 second beep:

http://vincewerber.org/swl/6secbeep-13874khz-1541utc-02-12-14.mp3

both are recorded in the USB mode (ie real frequency read out) and not CW.

I hope this is helpful...

Your 2 second beep is actually about once every 1.395 seconds, and the pulse length is about 0.115 seconds.  I have no idea what it is, but if your frequency is correct the c/f is about 13560.43 kHz.  I don’t think that fits with any of the beacons near that freq, but I do not know for sure.

As I said before, no telling what you will find on this freq.  I have a “regular” beep locally (once per second, 0.200 sec long) on 13560 kHz +/- that I was able to track down as coming from the local Wal-Mart (9 miles away), and it goes off when they shut some of the stuff down at night.  But no idea what it specifically is.  Right this minute I hear another beep on freq, 13560.38 kHz, that is about once per 0.85 sec and 0.19 sec long.  But I also have 3 different CODARs hitting the freq and a general lump of signals on 13560 that makes pulling anything out difficult.

Your 6 second beep on 13874 kHz was on a center freq of about 13874.96 kHz and is a 0.125 sec long beep every 6.0 seconds.  This fits with the Pips network as I thought.  13875 kHz +/- is a regular freq for them to hit.  As I said before ( http://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,15329.0.html ), the next time you hear that freq in use like this check the other related freqs and I bet you will hear more Pips.

While no one is really sure what the Pips network is for (front running theory is some kind of propagation thing) it is not one of what is normally thought of as HF Beacons.

T!

[cmradio]

...I was able to track down as coming from the local Wal-Mart (9 miles away), and it goes off when they shut some of the stuff down at night.  But no idea what it specifically is.

The Wally Mart near me uses RFID shoplift alert at the doors that uses 13.56 MHz. Freq. was right on the certification plate on the device.

Peace!

[ka1iic]

Hi Token

On the '2 second' beep... sorry about calling it that it was a guess of mine and no equipment was used to determine the timing... <heh>

As for the frequency... well the specs for the rig I was using on that intercept are as follows:

+- 4 ppm from 1 min. to 60 min after power on... and the rig was on for about 4 hours... Not lab standards for sure but fair to good for hobby purposes :-) reads out to 0.01 khz btw

Sorry for any confusion :-)

Hope this answers any questions

73
Vince
ka1iic

[Token]

Hi Token

On the '2 second' beep... sorry about calling it that it was a guess of mine and no equipment was used to determine the timing... <heh>

No reason to be sorry, your “2 second” was fine, I was just giving you the rough measured number if you were interested for your notes.  And my measured number is probably not dead on the money, but should be within 0.005 sec.

A decent free program that will display spectrograms and allow such measurements would be Spectrogram (there are several others also).  I find having at least a rough idea of the actual numbers can sometimes help ID things a little better.

As for the frequency... well the specs for the rig I was using on that intercept are as follows:

+- 4 ppm from 1 min. to 60 min after power on... and the rig was on for about 4 hours... Not lab standards for sure but fair to good for hobby purposes :-) reads out to 0.01 khz btw

Sorry for any confusion :-)

Again, no reason to be sorry, it was not a criticism.  I was only telling you the actual center freq assuming your freq readout was correct.  Some people like to log that, others could care less, it is all good either way.  For CW signals it is preferable to log center freq if possible.  Some tune CW in SSB, others in CW mode, and it can lead to confusion of the “real” freq unless you know the mode used and in the case of CW mode the CW offset of the receiver.  This confusion can be a problem on some beacons (and other CW signals) that are tight packed in freq and similar in sound.  Sometimes knowing the real freq can help determine which one you are hearing.

As before, a program like Spectrogram, Audacity, FLDigi, Argo, etc can be used to determine the center frequency form knowing your tuned freq and mode.  Then you add (or subtract if in LSB) the offset to your tuned freq and you have the center freq.

T!

[ka1iic]

yep for sure Token... and I do have some of those programs on this machine but at the time, as way too often, the machine is tied up doing other things that tend to max out the quad core :-)

I never use CW mode... unless I am using the Xceiver always USB for USB or AM (noise is awful here <sigh> )  when things get really bad I do use one of my home made CW filters as I like them much better that mech filters (i.e. Collins etc)  a matter of personal tastes I guess...

No offence taken on my part as this is a hobby and not politics hi hi...

Sometimes tho my 'by ear' tuning can be seriously degraded depending on how much whoopie juice I've been into.... <heh>

With that have a great day Sir!

73 Vince
ka1iic

[ka1iic]

Ok, here is what I am seeing now that I have the computer up and running on this intercept:

There seem to be 2 signals on this frequency of 13560 KHZ 2135UTC but earlier I could only copy the ('2 second beep") ie: 516HZ (2000UTC).

one is showing a CW tone (in USB ) of 516 HZ while the other shows a tone of 430HZ.

The signal at 430HZ has much faster in keying rate and also has a much better signal strength but both today are just above the noise level with a lot of deep fading.  The keying rate of the signal at 430HZ can also be variable at times.

I'm going to keep track of this from time to time...  Yep!!! It's bugging me.

73 Vince
ka1iic