[Lowfer] Wateringhole thoughts, Cushman CE24B.

[Bryce R Ofstie]

As Bill pointed out, keyclicks from WE will cover the others at the
wateringhole unless I put WE in a null.  If Lyle or Roger moved to the
wateringhole, I wouldn't have enough nulls in the pattern and we would have
to coordinate nights for shutting down just to listen.  Also, in order to
hear the any CW beacons or messages, the locals have to be far enough apart
from each other, or from the distant stations, that they are outside of the
IF bandpass of the reciever I use or AGC pumping messes things up.  Rogers
local beacon would keep me from hearing or seeing anything within about plus
or minus 500 Hz.  This is also true for QRSS signals although not too as
great an extent.  While it is tempting to move to the wateringhole so that
more people would report seeing my beacon, I know doing so would keep the
locals from seeing anyone else there.  And moving to our own regional
frequency would hinder our ability to have 2 way QSO's or experiment with
new modes, an area I wish we would be making more progress with (I know, I'm
as guilty as the rest).  If we were close in frequency, any of us running
normal CW, Wolf, Jason, BPSK, ... would cover the rest.  I understand how
nice it is to wake up in the morning and find that you've seen many beacons,
but I think its a bigger accomplishment to put the effort into setting up
for a bunch of nights just to be able to say you've caught one of the harder
to find, lone beacons.  My biased opinion :-)

On another note, I have a Cushman CE24A.  I'm not sure of the specs for the
24B but, even warmed up, the 24A would drift around too much to just set up
and run for more than 15 or 20 minutes without having to tweek the
frequency.  Also, like most selectives, the audio tone is around 1850 Hz, so
they are annoying to listen to.  Very handy for making level measurements
though.

Bryce
LF Beacon BRO - 182.200 kHz
Duluth, Minnesota   EN36us

http://cp.duluth.mn.us/~ki0le/