"K" beacon...

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majoco

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...going strong tonight @ 0800z 2100local on 5153.4 - part of the cluster. Right on the end of the Kamchatka Peninsula at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - must be a good propagation site. The Russky sub fleet has a base there.
 

majoco

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Same old JRC NRD 515 with a (short) longwire about 16metres and 5metres up into a matching transformer. Don't have a loop (yet?) but I have spent some time this summer (summer? you're joking of course!) refurbishing an old (1982?) ham bands trap vertical thats about 10metres (32ft) high. Need a permit from SWMBO to dig up her garden for radials and feeder :)

Andrews going well last night at 2130local 0830z on all freqs from 4724 to 13200 too. Echo on 8992 from multi-paths.

...and "Happy Birthday" Ridgy!
 
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ridgescan

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Same old JRC NRD 515 with a (short) longwire about 16metres and 5metres up into a matching transformer. Don't have a loop (yet?) but I have spent some time this summer (summer? you're joking of course!) refurbishing an old (1982?) ham bands trap vertical thats about 10metres (32ft) high. Need a permit from SWMBO to dig up her garden for radials and feeder :)

Andrews going well last night at 2130local 0830z on all freqs from 4724 to 13200 too. Echo on 8992 from multi-paths.

...and "Happy Birthday" Ridgy!
the more I tried to figure out what that acronym stood for-the deeper in trouble I got so I put it into google and it calmed down my overactive imagination:D but I knew who ya meant lol
...thanks for the wish too Martin!
 

Token

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A quick spin around the letter beacons, March 01, 2012, hitting them as I tune around for other stuff:
0113 20048.3 “K”
0113 20048.0 “C”
0114 20048.2 “F”
0117 16332.3 “K”
0117 16332.2 “F”
0119 13528.4 “M”
0119 13528.3 “K”
0121 13528.2 “F”
0121 13528.1 “A”
0122 10872.4 “M”
0123 10872.3 “K”
0123 10872.2 “F”
0123 10871.9 “S”
0125 8494.9 “S”
0141 7038.7 “D”
0203 10872.1 “A”

Tomorrow morning when I have a dark path I should pull more of the lower freq beacons. Possibly an hour or two from now I will have a good dark path to some of the more eastern beacons.

T!
 

ridgescan

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holy crap I never knew of all these-I tried just 20048cw and am getting 'K' gonna try more:)

EDIT actually I'm getting 'K' across all of those Token-on narrow too. How'd you pick those out so close together?
 
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majoco

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He's using his WinRadio 31DDC - I'll warm up the ole G303e and get the bandwidth down to 50Hz or so!
 

Token

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Actually, I was using my Perseus for this, the Excalibur was busy doing other things. But in this case it could have been any radio. I was actually using Argo to display the audio, keeping the Perseus in USB mode and 3 kHz bandwidth. The CW is clearly seen on the Argo waterfall (several are also seen on the Perseus waterfall). The nice thing about it is that the visual integration actually allows you to see signals you could not hear by ear (and at lower levels than the Perseus waterfall will display). But also, the human ear can distinguish pitch differences much smaller than the 100 Hz spacing of each of these signals, particularly so when you know what to expect.

T!
 

majoco

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I tried that trick tonight using SpectraVue but my laptop spits the dummy when trying to run the G303 and SpectraVue at the same time thru the VSC. Taking the audio out of the NRD515 works quite well, but my levels seem to be a bit strange - far too much audio input to get a good waterfall but the spectrum looks fine and I can filter and peak the tones. Like you I was setting the 'carrier' 1kHz down so that the frequency indicated was almost correct and could easily split the 3 stations on 13528, F, K and M. Conditions not so good tonight tho, lots of QRN on the lower freqs, big storm coming, here on Saturday. Heavy rain in Oz again.
 

Token

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I took another quick spin around the MX beacon freqs this morning before I left for work, with a dark path to eastern Russia. Unfortunately I had to use the SDR-IQ as all the other radios were on scheduled tasks at the time. I love the SDR-IQ and think it is a lot of bang for the buck, but also realize it has a noise floor more than 10 dB above the Excalibur so on very low level signals and low noise conditions (like this morning) it comes up a little short by comparison.

Yes majoco, when trying to get a visual using the audio in something like SV or Argo I tune below the signal and leave it in USB. For example in the case of the 4558 kHz group I tune to 4557 kHz, this leaves the CW tones between 700 Hz for the lowest freq beacon (4557.7 kHz, "D") and 1400 Hz for the highest freq beacon (4558.4 kHz, "M").

No sign of the 3594 group this morning, normally at this time I get a few hits from them, so suspect conditions are down a bit.

1332 4558.2 "F" Heavy QRM, BC station on 4557 kHz
1332 4558.3 "K" Heavy QRM, BC station on 4557 kHz
1334 5154.3 "K" Heavy QRM, Chinese OTHR and Chinese 4+4 modem on freq
1334 5154.1 "A" Heavy QRM, Chinese OTHR and Chinese 4+4 modem on freq
1336 7039.4 "M"
1336 7039.3 "K"
1336 7039.2 "F"
1337 7039.0 "C"
1338 8494.4 "M"
1338 8494.3 "K"
1338 8494.2 "F"

And no sign of the 10872, 13528, 16331, or 20048 kHz groups at this time of the morning, too early yet. In another hour or two they will start coming in from the east on the daylight path just before the western sights go into darkness and that closes down.

T!
 
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