[Lowfer] Lowfer Beacons

[Clint Turner]

Hello,

>Mark, welcome to the club! With the exception of Dex's distinctive
>sawtooth-modulated beacon on 510.5 kHz, I don't know if any MedFER
beacon
>has been heard for more than a couple of miles since the 1610-1710 kHz
range
> became populated with AM broadcast stations a few years ago.

I would beg to differ:  Not to blow my own horn, but the CT MedFER
beacon has been heard pretty much nightly by Steve, VE7SL:  This is
certainly true in the winter, and Steve was able to hear it on some
several occasions during the quieter summer evenings.

This beacon is operating on 1704.953  (Some listings show it as 1705.915
- I bumped the trimmer cap some time ago and never bothered trying to
get it back on frequency...)  During minutes 0-29 it operates QRSS3 and
switches to PSK31 for the remainder of the half-hour.  The switch to
PSK31 is usually a minute or two late, as it has to finish the CWID
first.

This frequency was chosen because it is nearly as high as it could be
according to Part 15, and it puts as much distance between BCBs on 1700
as is practical.  It is possible that with very long integration times,
a very slow QRSS could cut through a fair amount of BCB splatter (i.e.
the POI would be pretty low for the BCB.)

The mode switching/QRSS generation is done using an old Radio Shack
Model 100 laptop. Other schedules or CW sending rates are available upon
request:  If you want me to change it to QRSS30 and run that mode
full-time, I can do that.

More info may be found at:

http://www.ussc.com/~turner

(I *do* send out QSLs to those who email a screen capture:-)

73,

Clint
KA7OEI