Midwest Beacons and How to Listen for (or See) Them

In the past few weeks, I've had some interesting emails from WA9HCZ near LaCrosse. Also, Bill, KØAWU shared some interesting screenshots with the NLRS list. The topic at hand is listening to beacons with modern DSP tools and waterfall displays. Beacons, if their frequency is known accurately, can be received at your station and recognized with new DSP tools even though they are inaudible to your ear.

I've put the shared images, and some commentary with each, all in one place. I might make a poster session out of this page if it develops a bit further.

I reiterate that WA9HCZ and KØAWU are the source of the images, comments, and listening time. My role is only as an editor.

Click on any image to see a larger jpg.

Meteor Pings

"KØKP usually audible here and heard some pings on his signal today." Jerome, WA9HCZ

Aircraft Scatter

"Here is a view of W2UHI 432.299 EN63VB, 1545Z-1600Z, 24Apr2006, about 260 miles. This view lasted 15 minutes, the red marks on the bottom are 10 seconds. The band is good today because you can see the main signal, the aircraft scatter being the slanted lines from the doppler. Most of the time I cannot see the direct signal, only the scatter. The signal could not be heard by ear it is too weak. The program is Spectran, free off the internet." Jerome, WA9HCZ

Rain and Snow Scatter at 10 GHz

Listen to a wav of 10GHz scattered signals.

May 9, 2006
"Hearing the beacon in EN37 and watching it on Spectran. Just above the noise. COOL..... 2pm local" Bill KØAWU EN37ed

"2:06pm .... beacon is weak now. It was RS of course. GHZ and I have hadhalf dozen or so 10Ghz Qs in the last 18hrs. S9 last night on FM and S6 SSB just 20min ago. His 8watts is NICE. I tried and audion recording of the beacon, but NOT impressive... Saw and heard both freq of the FSK signal." KØAWU EN37ed

"Beacon very good now via RS .... Easy CW Q if Dave could control it!! 5-1 to 5-2 4:36pm non-direct path 178deg ... 6deg off path" KØAWU EN37ed

"The 10Ghz NØKP/B is located some 159.6 miles to my south. It has been seen and/or heard at KØAWU in EN37ed on two different dates (as of late May 2006). It was first observed with Spectran on March 12th at 9:45pm CST via SNOWscatter. The Duluth radar returns showed the snow extending north of Minneapolis to about mid path. The radar returns were at best about 20dBZ. Gary WØGHZ was S-2 so the path was not greatly enhanced at the time. Several stations in the greater Minneapolis area were reporting the beacon quite strong via snowscatter at the time."

"Then on May 9th, 2006 the NØKP/B was again observed on Spectran, but this time also heard, at times quite well. It was first seen and heard weakly about 2pm CDT. The weather responsible at mid path had radar returns at best about 45dBZ. The path was present for about 4hrs with the best beacon signals 5-1 to 5-2 at about 4:36pm CDT. Sadly the audio recordings during that time period were of poor quality. Gary WØGHZ was S-6 on SSB at this same time, so the path was quite good." KØAWU EN37ed

Monitor Transmitted Signal

"Most of what you will see on the display will be birdies, about 98% in fact. Signals that are local or not modulated will look clean and well defined. This will be easy to see when you narrow the resolution to less than 1 hz. The example is from my local beacon. The weak narrow signal is the xtal oscillator leaking thru the un-powered transmitter. There is some shift in frequency when the transmitter is powered up, but while it is still unkeyed for a second or two the signal looks pretty narrow and clean. This is a FSK signal so the lower signal is "off" while the upper signal is "on" or a standard CW signal. You can see that when the signal is keyed it gets "fuzzy". If this signal was propagated a long distance the unkeyed signal would also be more fuzzy than a local signal. The resolution has to be good enough to see this effect. When looking at the 300-3000 audio passband it may not be noticable so you have to make "adjustments" to get the bandwidth narrow enough to see the fuzzys. If you see a clean signal on your display at narrow bandwidth it is probably not a DX signal. The W2UHI beacon transmits a steady carrier most the time. When it identifies with CW it seems to disappear because the modulation spreads out the signal more and makes it harder to see. If you look carefully at the W2UHI signal you will see the regular ident where the signal really gets fuzzy. Also it is my theory that signals propagated a long distance get distorted by phase and amplitude distortion and the get "wider". This seems to indicate that the RX bandwidth can only be narrowed so far for really DX signals." Jerome, WA9HCZ

"A couple of pix of the wheel beacon ant, this one is a new spare I just built. It is similar to the stacked pair I have for the beacon. It is 28 inches across, smaller than a standard wheel. The purpose of this is to try to make the currents more uniform and cure some of the nulls in the pattern of the regular "big" (39") wheel." Jerome, WA9HCZ

"The 10Ghz system at KØAWU is a DSS dish with modified DSS feed at 55ft. At the dish is an equipment box that contains a DEMI 2W amplifier, 1db NF surplus KuBand LNA and switching relays. The transverter and Qualcom driving amplifier are located in the shack."

"I have observed Chan2 video carriers on 55.250 and have some captured images there too .... they make GREAT "beacons"" Bill, KØAWU