30m QRSS Si570 beacon: reports

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Written by Hans Summers

Thursday, 18 June 2009 17:51

AUGUST 2008

First operation of this beacon was a few days at the beginning of August 2008. At that time the aerial was a not-very-long longwire tuned by my homebrew ATU. The first (and only) report came from Claudio I2NDT.

03-Aug-08 18:34Z: Claudio I2NDT caught my beacon but the trace is very weak. The longwire antenna was probably extremely badly tuned. I'd made an attempt to tune it with my ATU but the powers are so low it was hard to be accurate.

JANUARY 2009

For 5 days at the beginning of January 2009 I operated the beacon into a newly erected 30m dipole. At the centre of the dipole is a balun made from an FT37-43 toroid with 6 bifilar turns and feeding a length of RG58 coaxial cable connected directly to the beacon output. This time the operation was very successful and reports came in from various European and American stations.

	02-Jan-09 12:07Z: Bruce W1BW runs an online grabber and I was very excited on the first day of beacon operation to see a faint but clearly identifiable trace of my beacon signal on his site.
	02-Jan-09 13:01Z: Shortly after, I could see my signal on Larry W8LIW's grabber too!
	02-Jan-09 13:23Z: Claudio I2NDT's online grabber showed consistently excellent reception of the beacon most days during daylight hours. I think Italy-UK must be a fairly ideal path for 30m.
	03-Jan-09 15:05Z: Pierre ON5SL received my beacon briefly at short range in Belgium.
	03-Jan-09 17:47Z: Vern VE1VDM runs an online grabber and before long my beacon signal showed up on his screen.
	04-Jan-09 11:57Z: The following day Peter PA1SDB sent a sequence of several screenshots showing a brief fade-in and fade-out of my signal. This screenshot is the clearest.
	04-Jan-09 15:10Z: Nice strong report from Paulo IZ1KXQ.
	04-Jan-09 23:22Z: It was unusual for Colin G6AVK to receive my beacon so well, particularly at night. Colin reported that the signal was visible all evening.
	04-Jan-09 23:22Z: Another from Colin G6AVK at around the same time shows an even clearer image.
	05-Jan-09 11:37Z: More strong copy in Italy, this nice report came from Alberto IK2JET.
	05-Jan-09 12:19Z: Excellent clear copy on Vern VE1VDM's grabber in Canada.
	05-Jan-09 12:23Z: Another strong report came in from Paulo IZ1KXQ the following day.
	05-Jan-09 13:39Z: A nice clear screenshot on Larry W8LIW's grabber on the last day.
	05-Jan-09 13:40Z: Another strong report from Claudio I2NDT's grabber.