[ARC5] NDB IDs

[Leslie Smith]

G'day list readers:
Here in Australia there are many beacons in the MF band between 200 and
500kHz.
I logged a page of stations on night after repairing an R-23 (or BC-453)
one evening.
Some give only the cal of the beacon l in MCW - such as the station 25km
from here on 405kHz.
Others (WLM) give weather info, (cloud height, barometer reading etc)
and runway in use every minute.
I can readily copy Brisbane and Melbourne here - 1000km to the north and
south.
Brisbane is only "available" from Archerfield when Williamtown shuts
down - they use the same frequency.

  Les
  vk2bcu at operamail.com


On Thu, Nov 1, 2012, at 8:09, Mike Morrow wrote:
> Jeep wrote:
> 
> > In the old days, of course, before the VOR system came along, NDBs and
> > Adcock ranges were the bee's knees.  I recall as a kid, and a new ham
> > in the late 50's, listening to the A/N Adcock range near Millville NJ.
> > In fact, that range was one of the last ones on the East Coast to be 
> > decommissioned.
> 
> In my last posting, I lamented being a few years too late for the era
> of US Adcock ranges.  I read somewhere that they were all gone in the
> USA by 1961.
> 
> > BTW, I've still got an LF/MF airways chart from the 40's.  Its neat
> > to see how it was done in days of yore.....
> 
> I have several of such charts from the late 1930s to the late 1950s.
> It's great to think back on a time that that the most essential piece
> of avionics, the one piece that you'd have if you could only have one,
> was the simple 200 to 400 kHz beacon band receiver which allowed one
> to follow the Adcock A-N ranges across the country without a loop antenna
> and to get terminal information and sometimes weather information from
> broadcasts made on 278 kHz or thereabouts.  Add a 3105 (later 3023.5)
> kHz AM transmitter and you could talk to the tower.  Add a MF loop
> antenna and BC band coverage and a whole new menu of direction finding
> was available, not to mention BC band entertainment.
> 
> There were many all-in-one sets that did all of that shortly after WWII.
> The GE AS-1B was one of the best.  At $200 in 1946, it cost the
> equivalent
> of $2400 2012 dollars.  Even the little Motorola Airboy beacon band dry
> battery set at $30 was the equivalent of today's $350.  I'd have loved
> to listen to 278 and 3105 kHz from that era.
> 
> 73,
> Mike / KK5F
> 
> 
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