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15 Comments +

  1. Hi Charles:

    Great to see photos and description on your beacon. My plans this year would be to get a web site like yours up I could direct people to on the beacon. Lots of beacons placed on the air since I placed mine on back in 1992 and would like to see a lot more home brewed beacons on the band.

    Mark
    KA9SZX

  2. Thanks, Mark! Creating a website with photos can be made with with WordPress. You can create a nice site about your beacon. I made an improved backup transmitter in case this one fails or starts to drift. I have no shortage of 28 MHz crystals as I bought a bag of 50of them off eBay for $3.00!

  3. I enjoyed your beacon page.. good luck! Low power seems to be working really well this year thanks to the sunspot cycle. I have been heard in Germany (from central Canada) with 130 mW and a dipole. I have two beacons and have been playing around with both low power and various antennas. Thanks to Reverse Beacon Network I can actually see the received signal at various locations almost live. I found that using a Solarcon A99 vertical ($75 on Amazon) really boosted my signal strength over the dipole. Just a thought. If you want to boost your low angle signal. Easy to install, easy to tune (cut 9″ off the top) and easy to mount on any pole. They work low to the ground too. Well, happy DXing.

    Ian VA3KAH

  4. Well if you do the low angle radiation will probably bring you a slew of new listeners. I have been a horizontal antenna guy all my life, but for a beacon – the A99 seems much better. If you put black tape around it, it is also almost invisible.

  5. Dear friend,

    I am sending you here the SWL report on your 10 m Beacon.
    I heard it on 9.FEB.2015 at 16:00 UTC on 28 225.3 kHz.

    RST 559
    Rig: FT817, ant LW

    Best regards,
    Pavel, OK2BMA
    QTH: Zlin, loc JN89TF

  6. Thank you very much, Pavel! It is nice to know that my little signal can be heard out there!

    Greetings from Missouri, Midwest USA

    regards,

    Charles KC0JCA Loc EM48SN

  7. Hi Charles. I’m currently listening to your beacon in NZ. It’s quite weak here, with a slight drift making it hard to avoid QRM from K6FRC/B4 using my narrow filters, but I have successfully recorded it.

    I guess I am off the end of your dipole which accounts for the weak signal. I agree with the suggestion of a simple vertical CB-type antenna rather than the dipole – or perhaps you could orient the dipole vertically? A fullwave wire loop would also improve your signal by a few dB, and is easy to make, with a quarterwave of 75 ohm coax to match it to your 50 ohm feedline.

    I have listed the beacon at http://www.HFbeacons.info and will upload the audio clip next time I update http://www.G4iFB.com

    Interesting website! Any chance you might update your QRZ.com page with a link to this site? It wasn’t easy to find.

    Have fun with your solar-powered homebrew activities. Good to find a ‘real ham’!

    73 GL Gary ZL2iFB

  8. Thank you for the signal report Gary! It is quite a thrill that my little beacon has reached the Land of the Kiwi! I will update the QRZ page to reflect my website address. Im hoping to save up some funds and install a Solarcon AH-99 this summer, but I am liking the idea of a full wave loop. Sorry about finding the website, I plan on adding the website address to the beacon ID, but I have been busy lately. I look forward to hearing your audio clip, and once again thank you so much for taking the time to report!

    73 from the mid-western United States,

    Charles kc0jca

  9. Hello CHarles,
    Heard your beacon on and thought I would let you know it is working in South Mississippi.
    73

  10. Beacon heard 8 am CST Feb 6 in Dupo, IL. I am a new ham. It was fun to copy your signal and look you up. We’re not exactly DX but QSL from just across the river.

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