[Lowfer] Beacons over night to NE Illinois

[Garry and Linda Hess]

Hi to all Lowfers,

Lack of NDB reports made it a good night to concentrate on lowfer 
beacons. Propagation was decent to NE Illinois as beacon SJ, 186.849.9 
kHz, QRSS-20 was already displaying weakly by 0400Z 021509. However, 
despite that the watering hole at 185.3 kHz, QRSS-30 only showed MP at 
that time (the W3EEE grabber showed MP solid and WM in and out).

Beacons WEB (185.95 kHz, QRSS-30) and TAG (185.8 kHz, Wolf-10) were 
tuned for unsuccessfully between 0410Z and 0440Z, but beacon WMS, 
QRSS-60 was coming through at 0445Z, ramping upward in frequency from 
187.490.7 kHz as it transmitted "W".  A return to the watering hole 
still only showed beacon MP coming in here up to 0530Z, even though WM 
was visible on the grabber.

Wolf-10 decoding of TAG failed again over 0530-0620Z. By 0640Z beacon 
XR, 184.322.2 kHz, QRSS-60 had been displayed successfully so the 
watering hole was visited again (this is tiring!). CV (185.298.3 kHz, 
QRSS-60) had joined MP by 0715Z here, but not on the grabber, which was 
barely showing WM. No WM here.

A TAG decode was again attempted and this time was successful, after 
about 20 minutes of integration (0745Z). WEB was looked for and again 
nothing was seen. So, you guessed it, back to the watering hole. This 
time a single visual display of M followed by W was seen (0845Z). At the 
time the grabber was showing only MP.  Kept looking until 1000Z and 
never noticed WM clearly again, but the grabber did resume showing it 
weakly.

Based on the above I wonder if WEB is off the air due to the bad storms 
that have been about of late. Also, although it was finally seen here, 
beacon WM is relatively weak compared to beacons SJ and TAG, that are at 
similar heading and distance.

73,
Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL