Re: beacon heard at 513kHz
Thanks for the reply guys. I'll try to copy down the Morse code and figure it out. Also until I can get into bigger or better eqipment I was going to try and fashion a better antenna. Any advice on length and design you guys could give would be helpful, maybe one that would improve my shortwave reception too.
Re: beacon heard at 513kHz
Posted by James S. on November 02, 2011 at 14:48:45.
In reply to Re: beacon heard at 513kHz posted by James S. on November 02, 2011
Sorry, Hifers copied today
I forgot to tell you I live just about 25 miles southeast of Wichita.
Posted by Sal, K1RGO on November 11, 2011 at 14:08:15.
After the hash noise dropped a bit, today at 14:45 EST local SIW,MP and GNK came through solid at 539 with QSB. Re: Hifers copied today
later Sal, K1RGO
Posted by John Davis on November 11, 2011 at 19:54:05.
In reply to Hifers copied today posted by Sal, K1RGO on November 11, 2011
Good copy in SE Kansas today of MP, SIW, NC (although with some deep fading), and USC.
SJ lowfer tests
Posted by Sal,K1RGO on November 13, 2011 at 19:01:45.
Well its that time of the season again for LF, and I'll be doing some testing on cw mode. I removed a branch or 2 on the antenna top hat, tightened the ropes and took some readings and looks ok for now. I'm going to do some listening of SJ in the field and probably resume QRSS20 around thanksgvg time, will post sked for SJ on 186.85 kHZ...... hifer WV copied
later....Sal, K1RGO
Posted by Sal, K1RGO on November 14, 2011 at 17:50:07.
For the first time I copied WV on ~13,556 kHZ at ~13:30 local EST peaking 539 with deep QSB.... Re: hifer WV copied
Later..Sal, K1RGO
Posted by John Davis on November 14, 2011 at 22:39:42.
In reply to hifer WV copied posted by Sal, K1RGO on November 14, 2011
Congratulations, Sal! We haven't heard from the operator in quite some time, and yours is the first report of the signal in many months too. Glad to hear he's still on the air.
John Sunday HiFERs
Posted by John Davis on November 14, 2011 at 22:47:49.
Sorry to take so long getting around to writing this, but work has been kind of hectic and I was hoping to get time to put together pictures before posting this. (Maybe later on those.)
Late Sunday afternoon while I was out in the field to make further modifications to the future LowFER ground system, I took time to check the HiFER band. With RY off the air for the season, the Big Three around 13555.4 are now MP, SIW, and NC in order of increasing frequency. In fact, NC has migrated further upward as Fall progresses, and is nearly 13555.6 some days. Down lower, at 13554.0, USC comes in to SE Kansas nicely most days, and did Sunday as well. Those are QRSS3 stations that were captured with Argo, of course, but all of them are sometimes audible as well.
As for stations that can be copied by ear, I heard GNK for only the second time thus far, and one or two characters at a time from K6FRC. First station out West I've copied in weeks!
John Re: hifer WV copied
Posted by Sal, K1RGO on November 16, 2011 at 06:54:56.
In reply to Re: hifer WV copied posted by John Davis on November 14, 2011
Hi John Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana
It looks like the hifer band is coming alive again. It was in poor shape for quite a while. I'm getting SJ ready for the LowFer season, had lots of branches to clear but the antenna made it through the nor'easter. Field tests look good.
later.......Sal
Posted by Darwin Long on November 19, 2011 at 15:55:58.
Last May, at my previous home in Empire, LA, the antenna for EMP 185.585 was accidentally knocked down by our landscaper when his son ran over the guy wire anchor with a ride-on mower, resulting in the demise of the EMP antenna.
Since then, my wife and I purchased a home in Buras, Louisiana, about 11 miles further out into the Gulf of Mexico on the Mississippi Delta. I have erected a full 50-foot vertical with 22-foot downsloping top radials as the capacitance hat. Today, I have fired up beacon BR, and it is now running 24-7 on 186.585kHz and with the same format and modulation as EMP had used last season. The USB voice ID is centered at 186.000kHz, and the CW is centered at 185.585 (so a radio zero-beat at 186.000 will produce the IDs with a 415Hz tone).
While your radio is tuned to 186.000 kHz, the format will appears as follows:
Minute one starts with a 5-tone chime, then 16 IDs of BR using a 415 Hz tone, followed by a 5-second dash at the end of the minute.
Minute two starts with a 5-tone chime, then a CW ID of BR alternating with a female voice ID saying "This is radiobeacon B R Buras, Louisiana U.S.A."
These two 1-minute cyles are alternated continuously and to the millisecond so you can time them accurately using spectrograms or a stopwatch.
Transmitter is located at 29.346303°N, -89.422612°W with Grid Square EL59hh.
Happy DXing. Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana
Darwin Long
Beacon BR 185.585kHz
Buras, LA
Posted by Garry Hess on November 19, 2011 at 17:23:06.
In reply to Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana posted by Darwin Long on November 19, 2011
Darwin, your new lowfer is getting out very well. Already see it up here near Chicago at 185.60 kHz, drifting slowly down in frequency. Welcome back!
73, Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL
Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana
Posted by Darwin Long on November 20, 2011 at 21:30:58.
In reply to Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana posted by Garry Hess on November 19, 2011
Thanks so much for the report, Gary!
Was briefly off tonight, but back on due to an unrelated electrical issue in our home. Readjusted the frequency, modulation, and antenna tuning just a bit, and am right about at 186.585 when it's 68°F outside.
Take care! Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana
-Darwin Long
BR 185.585 Buras, LA
Posted by Lee on November 24, 2011 at 02:40:04.
In reply to Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana posted by Darwin Long on November 19, 2011
No one has publicaly said anything. Not surprising. But my understanding of the reg's is the combination of grd lead, antenna length, and top hat cannot exed 50 ft. Using that guide the antenna in question is about 22 ft larger than alowed. Good DX but us DUMB ASS reg followers don't get any love. Thanks Darwin for your Bakersfield and Santa Barbera receive reports. Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana
Lee
Posted by Darwin Long on November 25, 2011 at 12:13:07.
In reply to Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana posted by Lee on November 24, 2011
Lee-
I don't cherish the thought of having to order the cherrypicker again along with a six-pack of Abita Amber and the two patient Cajun tree trimmers that cut my tree and helped me put the tower up, to have them to help me take down the tower so I can redesign it again - certainly wasn't very easy to put up, and lots of thought and planning went into that antenna system.
The FCC specifications for 1750m LowFER antennas are extremely generalized, and do not articulate any dimensions of capacitance hats or ground radial systems (or make mention of them), how they must be calculated, nor do they restrict geometric shapes that can be used for an antenna tower. The Rules also do not mention whether the measurement is to be made on the longest side of a geometric shape, the longest length of any one continuous–length conductor no matter its orientation with respect to the main radiator element, if the total length of all conductors is what is to be considered, or if the longest overall dimension of said system is the “length” measurement. The latter is how most LowFERs measure their antennas, simply because any HORIZONTAL component (like a tophat or radial) does not actively contribute any radiation at all to the overall vertically-polarized wavefront being emitted from the total vertical system. The FCC Part 15 Rules only specify the maximum dimension of the entire sum of [antenna + feedline + ground lead] must not exceed 50 feet for the 1750-meter band, but do not expressly explain how the individual parts are measured.
The actual radiating vertical dimension of my tower is around 46 feet because each 1 ½ inch 10-foot pipe section couples together by inserting and bolting into the next one by 9 inches, and the topmost 1-inch section is inserted about 20 inches with spacers and bolts holding it in place. (Yes, I also have a vertical wire connecting all pipe pieces together so no intermittancies occur in high wind or in case of corrosion). My ground lead from transmitter chassis to ground rod is 24 inches, and the lead from the top of the variometer to the tower is 20 inches.
If LowFERs are to go exclusively by the rather vague language of the Part 15 regulations, rather than the technical reality of antenna physics and wave propagation theory, then some intriguing questions arise:
If I happen to feed my tower 10 inches from the base, not at the base (which I do), does this shorten the antenna, seeing as the 10 inches below the feedpoint will phase-cancel out the 10 inches above it?
Do you account for the length of your whole 8-foot ground rod, or just the wire going to it and any portion sticking out above the soil? Where does the Part 15 Rules state the beginning point of measurement is located?
What about tuned ground radials? Where I now live on the Mississippi River Delta of Louisiana where ground conductivity is rated a 10 out of 10, and I use NO ground radials. However, when I lived in Simi Valley, CA, where ground conductivity was much poorer, I had seven 50-foot-long radials terminated at the far ends surrounding my 35-foot tower. Does this mean that any LowFER setup utilizing ground radials is not operating within Part 15 because they add into the “feedline + ground line + antenna” equation? This would be the case for probably 90 precent of current LowFERS right off the bat.
Is the length of the wire from the final amplifier output to the bottom of the loading coil also included in the “feedline + ground line + antenna” equation?
If a loading coil IS NOT considered part of the antenna, then at what winding spacing is the loading coil no longer considered a loading coil, becoming instead a helical vertical antenna included in the “feedline + ground line + antenna” equation?
If a loading coil IS considered part of the antenna, is it the physical width of the band of windings, or the total length of the wire composing said coil, that gets added into the “feedline + ground line + antenna” equation?
If I soldered another wire from the bottom of the tower up to the bottom of each downslope tophat wire above the insulator, creating a diamond-shaped tower, does doing so cause the structure to become one tower unit, measured for length from the two most distant points (topmost to bottommost), rather than from longest continual length of any one conductor? In other words, is a diamond-shaped Blaw-Knox tower that is exactly the same height as a vertical flagpole considered by the FCC to be the same length as each other? The FCC doesn’t seem to differentiate top-loaded heights or specially-shaped vertical towers from unloaded vertical towers in commercial AM broadcast antenna systems. Top-loaded towers are recorded by the FCC as top-loaded, but the antenna’s physical height remains exactly the same in the FCC records as if the tower was not top-loaded (a 300-foot tower for 1510kHz is still recorded as a height of 165.6 degrees, whether or not it is top-loaded). So my tower would still be measured as a height of 3.19 degrees whether or not I had a tophat, especially since ALL of the tophat runs downward BELOW and AWAY FROM the highest point of the tower, not adding any vertical length to it. The LowFER Part 15 rules do not exclude any use of a tophat of any dimension or proportion anywhere in the verbiage. If all components in an antenna structure were additively considered rather than overall bottom-to-top length, then most AM broadcast towers would be considered to be miles long what with all the struts in the latticework, tophat cables, and hundreds of buried ground radials surrounding the tower like wheel spokes.
It seems to be up to the operator how to interpret the Part 15 LowFER antenna rules, which are very broad and generalized. I opted to choose calculating the total vertical dimension of the whole radiating tower structure for the “feedline + ground line + antenna” equation because the vertical dimension is what is radiating, not the horizontal dimension. Adding tophat is really adding thickness (horizontal dimension), not length (vertical dimension), to the antenna in order to increase antenna capacitance for increased current. If you look at an aeronautical beacon T-antenna using a standard 300-foot pair of wires stretched taut between two 40-foot telephone poles with a downlead in the middle to the shack, it is the 40-foot downlead that is radiating, not the parallel tophat wires supporting it. In the case of my tower, the 21-foot downsloping tophat wires provide increased antenna current by increasing the capacitance of the antenna, but at the same time shield the upper 14.8 feet of tower because they’re folded back onto the vertical portion like an umbrella, phasing out that section's radiation. The trade-off is a much higher antenna current and better radiation from the rest of the antenna below the tophat's lowest point. (Downsloping the tophat greater than 30 percent of the total tower height will begin to decrease overall radiation from the tower as the shielding effect will begin to outweigh any benefit related to increased capacitance and antenna current).
Just some insights as to why I designed my antenna the way I did.
Tomorrow through Monday, we’re expecting extremely high winds, so who knows… the tower might just end up coming down by default anyway.
-Darwin PBO - BACK ON THE AIR
Posted by Rick KA2PBO on November 26, 2011 at 11:40:50.
PBO is up and running after some tree trimming and re-tuning last night.
Holiday HiFERs
73
Rick KA2PBO "PBO" 187.2 KHZ qrss60
Posted by John Davis on November 26, 2011 at 13:59:08.
Thanksgiving Day didn't offer much radio reception to be thankful for. The inch of rain we had Monday night prompted a lot of intermittent powerline buzz on the rural electrical grid of SE Kansas, mainly from 170-200 kHz and 13.5-14 MHz, the very places I was trying to listen the most. But Friday was a different story! No powerline buzz, and QRN was very low until after susnset.
Friday afternoon I managed to view MP, SIW, NC and USC. There was quite a lot of QSB, but much of the time these were audible as well. That encouraged me to tune around a bit, and I picked up both WV and MTI for the first time! Also heard EH again for the first time in a few months, sometimes quite loud; and copied FRC again too, mainly two or three letters at a time due to the rapid level fluctuations.
Wanted to try some more today, but every time I thought about heading out to the field, the rain began again.
John
Re: hifer WV copied
Posted by EdWSlidell,LA on November 28, 2011 at 21:24:57.
In reply to Re: hifer WV copied posted by John Davis on November 14, 2011
I also just noticed the presence of WV on about ~13556 KHz. First heard over the Thanksgiving holiday period--left the receiver on 13555.8 KHz, while otherwise occupied. At first it was barely in the 229 range, peaking around 339. During the next few days, it sometimes came up to 449, but after a few ID's always had QSB dropping it below the noise. The ID does seems to have changed, with WV sometimes replaced with five dots/ "E" 's. Back on the air after the bad weather in the early part of the year maybe. EH, MTI, GNK, and K6FRC were also heard with good signals. EdWSlidell,LA EM50cg.
Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana
Posted by EdWSlidell,LA on November 29, 2011 at 20:53:49.
In reply to Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana posted by Darwin Long on November 25, 2011
Hi Darwin. Whatever the final tower status might be, it certainly is putting out better that the 'demised' Empire version. Able to copy it in the daytime, without having to use the tuner/coupler on the coax line to the 143 ft. LW. For an antenna without radials, it has a very good signal. EdWSlidell,LA EM50cg
Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana
Posted by Lee on November 29, 2011 at 23:51:30.
In reply to Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana posted by Darwin Long on November 25, 2011
Not so general. I like the idea of the diamond shape tophat to base config. It reminds me of the farmer using his 25 foot tall 30 foot diameter water tank as an antenna.
§ 15.217 Operation in the band 160-190 kHz.
(a) The total input power to the final radio frequency stage (exclusive
of filament or heater power) shall not exceed one watt.
(b) The total length of the transmission line, antenna, and ground lead
(if used) shall not exceed 15 meters.
(c) All emissions below 160 kHz or above 190 kHz shall be attenuated at
least 20 dB below the level of the unmodulated carrier. Determination
of compliance with the 20 dB attenuation specification may be based on
measurements at the intentional radiator's antenna output terminal
unless the intentional radiator uses a permanently attached antenna, in
which case compliance shall be demonstrated by measuring the radiated
emissions.
Cheers
Lee
lowfer SJ 186.85 kHz
Posted by Sal,K1RGO on November 30, 2011 at 13:09:37.
Well that time of year again, I'm having an issue wid one hanging branch but gonna fire up SJ next wed Dec 7, QRSS20 anyway. I tried getting it down but I'm not the monkey I was when I was younger , so I quit while I was ahead....signal checks out ok for now.... Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana
later.........
Posted by Lee on November 30, 2011 at 20:30:08.
In reply to Re: Beacon BR 185.585 (ex EMP) now on-air in Buras, Lousiana posted by Darwin Long on November 25, 2011
80 mph Santa Ann's over night peaking at 0300. I might be redesigning my setup as well.
Lee
potrzebie