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Author Topic: Currently Active Beacons Chat  (Read 16525 times)

Offline MojaveBeaconeer

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Re: Re: Currently Active Beacons
« Reply #15 on: May 04, 2020, 2245 UTC »
Chris/Jim/others:  I am hearing - since about a week now but it is not one I know anything about **honest** save for it is a weak daytimer and so closer than Coxie and is similar strength as Coxie.  Sends "R" in a slow ident with a short space.  It's on ~4096.2 approx.  I've been monitoring it as well as the Phallaxy Beacon (etc.). NOT anything Iknow but THANKS to the op!

Ident not similar to the 5.1 sec. cycle 521.48 "R" beacon in the desert with reportedly 60w input... but 2-3 w ERP...  hmmm... 

Coxie often begins with a chirp. Phallaxy has none... both remain daytime only.  Coxie is easily 10-15 dB stronger than Phallaxy here...

Offline MojaveBeaconeer

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Re: Re: Currently Active Beacons
« Reply #16 on: May 04, 2020, 2249 UTC »
Could this be the Inyo Whooper?  An imposter maybe?   Listening to the Northern Utah SDR this morning 1445Z I see and hear a dasher on 4097.2 KHz.  Seems to be a bit faster than one dash/sec.  Some fading but overall a pretty good signal into that receiver.

Alledgedly is is the "Inyo Whooper" back safe in it's shop where it was built back in 2007 just put on as a test... me thinks... MB

Offline MojaveBeaconeer

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Re: Re: Currently Active Beacons
« Reply #17 on: May 04, 2020, 2253 UTC »
What happened to the 'Inyo Whooper' (a daytimer) was that its solar-panel partially-failed and was putting out only 4 volts intermittently.  The antenna was trashed by winds and nibblers after 10 years - kinda flimsy wire anyway - never thought it would last so long..., so it kinda was NG and so the thing had to go home, alledgedly... me thinks... it can be put on from its home... someplace ... still 4097.2 but i believe its keying cap was changed a tad...

Offline MojaveBeaconeer

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Re: Re: Currently Active Beacons
« Reply #18 on: May 04, 2020, 2257 UTC »
2 suggestions about the listing of the "Rocky" beacon at 6626.4 kHz. 

  • 1. Rocky beacon might better be described as an "AM variable tone beacon" rather than a "buzzer beacon".
  • 2. The observed average center frequency of Rocky this year has been 6626.4 kHz, rather than 6626.2 kHz.

It appears that the transmitted tone modulation frequency is possibly related to temperature.
The hotter, the lower pitched the audio tone.
The colder, the higher pitched the audio tone.

When observed on a hot day in August, the frequency was 56 Hz, and it indeed sounded like a buzzer due to the lower pitch of the audio tone.

However, when observed during colder days in November, the audio tone modulation frequency was running between about 700 Hz ~ 1000 Hz, and it didn't sound at all like a buzzer, but more like a triangle wave or square wave oscillator, listen:

PLAY AUDIO 6626kHz Rocky AM tone beacon 2018NOV 2324UTC

We wonder whether the suspected temperature tone variability is intentional?

If indeed the temperature vs tone frequency is an intentional feature of this beacon, then this beacon might be described as an
Amplitude Modulated tone temperature telemetry beacon

Isn't that fascinating? :)

AMAZINGLY IT WAS A CRAPPY OLD 70s (oops caps lok) radio-shack kit-cannabilized cap. 10 uF in the RC keying ckt. that failed!! Just a malfunctioning cap!  It led to this phenomenon! Now the Rocky beacon has a new 22 uF Sprauge 2020 version - ...  alledgedly... MB

Offline MojaveBeaconeer

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Re: Re: Currently Active Beacons
« Reply #19 on: May 04, 2020, 2306 UTC »
And a final note for today to update it all here is that Coxie (~4096.0) is still as-is and will be left alone.  It's cool and old now (19 yrs.) and day-only with a big start-up chirp but has good ERP but less than The Wind Beacon.

SO the above 5 or so posting should fill in the blanks and corrections for all, I think, allegedly.  I guess or assume.  I suppose and conjecture on all of this ...

Offline MojaveBeaconeer

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Re: Re: Currently Active Beacons
« Reply #20 on: May 04, 2020, 2314 UTC »
Yes one other last thing I believe maybe perhaps allegedly -  when ROCKY-had-a-bad-buzz was visited in March, it's solar-panel wires were almost DOA due to nibblers - maybe a few month's time left and it would be gone if too far to get to... so it came back to someplace to be fixed and put on a fence... :-)

Thanks for allof the total fun listening dudes and dudesses. watch out for the big bad spiky bug king...

Offline MojaveBeaconeer

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Re: Re: Currently Active Beacons
« Reply #21 on: May 21, 2020, 2042 UTC »
~4096.0 "Coxie" in JTNP still loud and clear still here by early morning past Sunrise and by 1700PT also, and it will go for as long as it can.  Oh, would you know another replacement of the former "Haystack" beacon on 4096.35 is planned and should be audible back/down-east if a site with a good eastward low-angle signal launch point can be located... 73 MB

Offline Quinta

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Re: Re: Currently Active Beacons
« Reply #22 on: June 22, 2020, 2330 UTC »
>it's solar-panel wires were almost DOA due to nibblers - maybe a few month's time left and it would be gone if too far to get to... so it came back to someplace to be fixed and put on a fence... :-)

Hi, i made two qrp beacons, first CW only on 27.145 70mw, second speaking their coordinates and power in fm 27.200 and then send rtty, 500 mw tx with 2w solar panel. Both now placed in the forest on trees, in russia, near St.Petersburg.
Both transmitters with their controllers (arduino with cw/rtty/melody/speaking sketch) glued with epoxy resin directly to solar panel.
Today, after reading some posts here i buy 20 4,5w solar elemets, resin, some 8w 250mhz transistors and bunch of quartz generators and resonators.
Now i thinking about wire for antennas, i think stainless steel wire rope for gardens the best choise.
And why beacons here used 4096 khz freq?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyRJJnI8Hxg&
Picture of first CW 70mWt beacon. https://sun9-50.userapi.com/c853528/v853528174/9948d/suWjbP_ICJ4.jpg
« Last Edit: June 23, 2020, 0628 UTC by Quinta »

Offline Teotwaki

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Re: Re: Currently Active Beacons
« Reply #23 on: June 24, 2020, 0405 UTC »
Hi, i made two qrp beacons, first CW only on 27.145 70mw, second speaking their coordinates and power in fm 27.200 and then send rtty, 500 mw tx with 2w solar panel. Both now placed in the forest on trees, in Russia, near St.Petersburg.
Both transmitters with their controllers (arduino with cw/rtty/melody/speaking sketch) glued with epoxy resin directly to solar panel.
Today, after reading some posts here i buy 20 4,5w solar elements, resin, some 8w 250mhz transistors and bunch of quartz generators and resonators.
Now i thinking about wire for antennas, i think stainless steel wire rope for gardens the best choice.
And why beacons here used 4096 khz freq?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyRJJnI8Hxg&
Picture of first CW 70mWt beacon. https://sun9-50.userapi.com/c853528/v853528174/9948d/suWjbP_ICJ4.jpg

greetings to you Quinta!

Thanks for sharing the picture and the video. The Arduino programming audio is very interesting. I am really slow at learning to program my Arduino.

Lots of beacons have landed on 4.096 MHz because the crystals are cheap and readily available (even on Amazon)

The reason they are so available is because they are used as a stable reference frequency that can be easily divided to various other clock signals used by microprocessors in TVs, cordless phones, computers and so on.

1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096


4096 – power of two 2*12; 64*2; 16th cube; smallest number with exactly 13 divisors; a superperfect number
Jim
NRD-525, Elecraft KX3 and Elecraft PX3 Spectrum Display
76' end fed long wire & 66' off-center fed dipole for 10/20/40 meters
Orange County, SoCal, The better half

Offline Quinta

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Re: Currently Active Beacons Chat
« Reply #24 on: June 24, 2020, 1852 UTC »
>Thanks for sharing the picture and the video. The Arduino programming audio is very interesting. I am really slow at learning to program my Arduino.
Its simple actually, here https://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,68726.0.html sketch which measure and speak temperature, battery voltage and output transmitter power, and instructiosn how to record own words for this synthesyzer. There can be mistakes in measuring section, but at least temperature measured and speakes correctly.
But this is too simple, this guy sends with arduino sstv images from ccd cam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdQBwArdG34
« Last Edit: June 24, 2020, 1854 UTC by Quinta »

Offline Teotwaki

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Re: Currently Active Beacons Chat
« Reply #25 on: June 25, 2020, 0300 UTC »
Please use this thread for chat about the beacon list.

I've made several changes to the list. Please let me know if there's any beacons I have missed.

Thanks for all of the updates Chris!

All who are interested should review the list and provide updates for Chris
Jim
NRD-525, Elecraft KX3 and Elecraft PX3 Spectrum Display
76' end fed long wire & 66' off-center fed dipole for 10/20/40 meters
Orange County, SoCal, The better half

Offline Teotwaki

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Re: Currently Active Beacons Chat
« Reply #26 on: December 14, 2020, 1526 UTC »
Should we pencil in the 4097.2 Dasher (possibly the former Inyo Whooper) and  the new 4095.7 Desert Whooper beacons into the master list?
Jim
NRD-525, Elecraft KX3 and Elecraft PX3 Spectrum Display
76' end fed long wire & 66' off-center fed dipole for 10/20/40 meters
Orange County, SoCal, The better half

Offline Teotwaki

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Re: Currently Active Beacons Chat
« Reply #27 on: December 14, 2020, 1536 UTC »
Also the line about Windy

4102.74 Windy sends W followed by dits for the wind speed, every so often it sends TMP and the temperature, then B and the battery voltage.

Could be changed to

4102.74 Operating intermittently. When it is functioning properly, Windy sends W followed by dits for the wind speed. Every so often it sends TMP and the temperature, then B and the battery voltage. When the battery voltage is low (below 11.3v ?) it will send "H"  and as the voltage trends lower it will send "S"
Jim
NRD-525, Elecraft KX3 and Elecraft PX3 Spectrum Display
76' end fed long wire & 66' off-center fed dipole for 10/20/40 meters
Orange County, SoCal, The better half

Offline Token

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Re: Currently Active Beacons Chat
« Reply #28 on: January 03, 2021, 1727 UTC »
Should we pencil in the 4097.2 Dasher (possibly the former Inyo Whooper) and  the new 4095.7 Desert Whooper beacons into the master list?

Guesses on my part for both of them as of early January 2021.

4097.2x has been active since at least early November with no real changes noted since then, so it appears to be here to stay.  I don't think that is related to the old Inyo Whooper though, it does appear to be related to 7997.2 kHz.  The two dashers appear in sync.  Both of them have some interesting propagation to me on my local receivers, at times they boom in, but most of the time they are not detectable.  Typically when I can hear one I cannot hear the other, but I suspect that is propagation, as occasionally I do hear them both at the same time.

The Desert Whooper also appears to be hanging in there.  But since it is still changing a little I suspect we are not seeing it  in its final version / location yet.

My vote would be that both need to be on the lsit.

T!
T!
Mojave Desert, California USA

Offline Teotwaki

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Re: Currently Active Beacons Chat
« Reply #29 on: January 03, 2021, 1815 UTC »
Should we pencil in the 4097.2 Dasher (possibly the former Inyo Whooper) and  the new 4095.7 Desert Whooper beacons into the master list?

Guesses on my part for both of them as of early January 2021.

4097.2x has been active since at least early November with no real changes noted since then, so it appears to be here to stay.  I don't think that is related to the old Inyo Whooper though, it does appear to be related to 7997.2 kHz.  The two dashers appear in sync.  Both of them have some interesting propagation to me on my local receivers, at times they boom in, but most of the time they are not detectable.  Typically when I can hear one I cannot hear the other, but I suspect that is propagation, as occasionally I do hear them both at the same time.

The Desert Whooper also appears to be hanging in there.  But since it is still changing a little I suspect we are not seeing it  in its final version / location yet.

My vote would be that both need to be on the list.

T!

Hello!

They were both added to the list on Dec. 18th   8)

I just updated both listings. I like your note about 4097.2 and 7997.2 being in sync so I added that in as well as added 7997.2 to the list
« Last Edit: January 03, 2021, 1823 UTC by Teotwaki »
Jim
NRD-525, Elecraft KX3 and Elecraft PX3 Spectrum Display
76' end fed long wire & 66' off-center fed dipole for 10/20/40 meters
Orange County, SoCal, The better half

 

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