Hi all,

I finally have my 10 meter beacon on the air. It's on 28.232 continuous
transmitting 2 watts. Give a listen & see if you can hear it.

More info at: http://www.geocities.com/n2uhc_2/beacon.html

Tom Sevart N2UHC
Frontenac, KS

http://www.geocities.com/n2uhc

"MnMikew" wrote in
:

Pardon my newbieness, but what exactly is a beacon and what is its
purpose? I'll see if I can pick it up tonight from MN.

heh heh... you won't be picking up anything at night on the 10 meter band
unless it's local.

"MnMikew" wrote in message
...
Pardon my newbieness, but what exactly is a beacon and what is its
purpose?
I'll see if I can pick it up tonight from MN.

A propagation beacon is used to determine the propagation characteristics of
a particular band. Basically it's used to see what areas the band is open
to. With the way propagation on 10 meters is, it's good to be able to see
if that band is open or not. If you hear beacons there, then there's a
pretty good chance you'll be able to work someone. The beacon band is from
28.200-28.300.

--
Tom Sevart N2UHC
Frontenac, KS

http://www.geocities.com/n2uhc

Jackie wrote:

Mike-- not a good time to hear distant beacons on 10 meters. Beacons are
good tests of propagation- if you can hear them, chances are you can make
contacts to wherever the signal's coming from. Tune your radio in to 28.254
MHz and you'll hear a local beacon, N0AR, from St. Paul. It transmits at 500
mW in 10 WPM Morse. As winter approachs, you'll start to hear more distant
beacons on 10. Last winter, I was hearing them from the west coast, Canada,
Texas and Mexico quite easily, but 10 meters is a pretty "dead" summertime
band, except for the occasional opening.

Jackie

Although regular F1/F2 propagation is becoming more difficult for the
10-M band because of the declining solar cycle, there's still the
possibility of sporadic-E propagation at any time of the day or night.


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Thanks Jackie, I'll give it a whirl.

"Jackie" wrote in message
news:Lci_a.90931$Oz4.22220@rwcrnsc54...
Mike-- not a good time to hear distant beacons on 10 meters. Beacons are
good tests of propagation- if you can hear them, chances are you can make
contacts to wherever the signal's coming from. Tune your radio in to
28.254
MHz and you'll hear a local beacon, N0AR, from St. Paul. It transmits at
500
mW in 10 WPM Morse. As winter approachs, you'll start to hear more distant
beacons on 10. Last winter, I was hearing them from the west coast,
Canada,
Texas and Mexico quite easily, but 10 meters is a pretty "dead" summertime
band, except for the occasional opening.

Jackie

On 12 Aug 2003 18:55:01 GMT, donut wrote:

"MnMikew" wrote in
:

Pardon my newbieness, but what exactly is a beacon and what is its
purpose? I'll see if I can pick it up tonight from MN.

heh heh... you won't be picking up anything at night on the 10 meter band
unless it's local.

Well, you clearly need to take a look at the antenna you're using. I
used to hear all sorts of stuff on ten meters in the early evenings.
Years ago, some friends and I located in the Baltimore and Washington
DC region used to get together on 28.720 every night and often we'd
get interrupted by a few Aussies and New Zealanders. These weren't
weak signals, these were substantial signals that we couldn't ignore.

Ten meters is a funny band. Signals can come and go very quickly.
It's not well suited for broadcast work, but it is pretty good for
making a casual contact. One way to tell if the band is open is to
check the beacon sub-band. You'd be amazed what you can hear, and
when...

73,


Jake Brodsky, AB3A
"Beware of the massive impossible!"

"starman" wrote in message
...

Although regular F1/F2 propagation is becoming more difficult for the
10-M band because of the declining solar cycle, there's still the
possibility of sporadic-E propagation at any time of the day or night.

You are of course correct, starman... after I read your post, my memory was
tweaked about a recent catch of the beacon XE1SRF out of Cuernavaca, Mexico
(28.189 MHz). I checked my DX logger program and, sure enough, I grabbed
that beacon on an evening in mid-July, after 10 meters had been dead for
most of the day (I had no trouble picking up that same beacon in March and
April-- in fact, I could hear it most nights from my location). That same
evening, I logged a couple of beacons in Texas. A couple of hours later,
they weren't there anymore. I'm still new to sporadic-E and other rarer
forms of propagation, and it's always kinda fun when you can hit on the odd
catch, only to have it gone soon afterwards. I like dialing up and down the
10 meter beacon frequencies of the dial whenever I can.

Jackie

"Jake Brodsky" wrote in message
news
Ten meters is a funny band. Signals can come and go very quickly.
It's not well suited for broadcast work, but it is pretty good for
making a casual contact. One way to tell if the band is open is to
check the beacon sub-band. You'd be amazed what you can hear, and
when...

True. I've gotten many cool QSL cards from beacon owners. Well, I've gotten
at least a dozen or so, which, for me, is many. In fact, I increased my
Morse copying speed just by listening to beacons-- most of 'em send their
IDs at around 10 WPM or so.

I am a pretty new amateur radio operator as well as a longtime SWL. I got my
General class amateur radio license last winter, and I quickly bought a
transceiver (the Icom IC-718) that goes from 10-160 meters. A simple,
excellent, yet inexpensive transceiver, which also makes a very good
shortwave receiver, in my opinion. For an antenna, I was using a borrowed
Hy-Gain 4 band trap vertical, with about 25 homemade radials of varying
lengths. It worked *great* on 10,15, 20 and 40 meters.

One of my favorite bands during the past winter was 10 meters. I would hears
lots of activity on 10, especially on weekend days, and I was making
contacts into the twilight and just beyond. Ten was just abuzz with chatter
then, and I logged many contacts there. When I first started making
contacts, I felt like a kid running through a candy store when I was on 10.

I have been "off the air" from transmitting since mid-July, due to a recent
move to an antenna-restricted location, but I have still been listening to
10 meters on my SSB-capable SW radio here and there since my move. Lately,
my listening has garnered nothing in the way of hams talking on 10 (I've
mostly concentrated my listening to 28.0-28.6 MHz). Yet, there were times
during that same time period (mid to late July) when I could hear several
beacons clearly that're 2,000 miles away from me. Still, I heard no one
doing any talking on the 10 meter ham bands... sometimes I wonder if 10
meters has a bad reputation for being a band you "just can't use" at this
time of the year, so no one even tries it.

Early this summer, just for S&G's (this was, of course, before I went off
the air) I would toss out a CQ or two on 10 meters, right around 28.4 MHz,
where I thought people might be listening. I even tried Morse Code on the
calling portion of the band, with no response.

I wondered how much of the lack of response was due to bad propagation--
i.e., people just weren't hearing me-- or people were just not bothering to
tune their transceivers to 10, instead favoring 20 and 40 meters, because of
the capricious reputation of 10 meters? I know the antenna was working fine
in mid-winter, because I made contacts all over the world on 10 then. I now
refer to 10 meters (temporarily, anyway) as "the ghost band". I know it'll
come back around, but dang. It was so much fun to be on it last winter.

I'm hoping to get back on the air from my local club station very soon, and
you can bet I'll be listening in on 10 meters now and then, especially as
winter nears. I am interested to see how the declining solar activity will
affect this coming winter's propagation on 10.

73 de Jackie

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 02:57:04 GMT, "Jackie"
wrote:

Early this summer, just for S&G's (this was, of course, before I went off
the air) I would toss out a CQ or two on 10 meters, right around 28.4 MHz,
where I thought people might be listening. I even tried Morse Code on the
calling portion of the band, with no response.

Yeah, Ten and even more so the Six meter band are the Rodney
Dangerfield's of Ham Radio. Some folks will make extraordinary
efforts to use Two Meter sideband and yet totally ignore these bands.
Both of them suffer from lack of operators because "the band is dead".
So we hear all sorts of beacons, we call, and nobody answers.

Sigh.


Jake Brodsky, AB3A
"Beware of the massive impossible!"