On Saturday 24 May I connected my newly acquired K1EL keyer to a little homebrew 10 meter beacon transmitter that I'd built about 10 years ago. (The transmitter is based on the "Lil Slugger" design by Doug DeMaw -- about 1 watt out.) Ten meters seems pretty dead these days, so when I turned the thing on and put it on the air, I had the feeling that no one would hear me. It sort of felt like throwing a message-in-a-bottle into the ocean. I put my e-mail address in the beacon transmission. I've had the thing on the air very intermittently over the last few days.
Imagine my surprise when this morning my e-mail box contained a message from Andre in Germany. He'd heard the beacon in its first day on the air! Wow!
During daylight hours I can hear beacons from all over Europe on ten.
I have left space in my "beacon box" for a very QRPP 30 meter transmitter. The K1EL keyer will generate QRSS. Where is the best place to get a crystal for 10.140 Mhz?
See if you can hear my beacon on 28.240 MHz. I'll have it on during daylight hours (Italian daylight hours).
I'll post some pictures soon.
Posts
9 hours ago
There was a good opening on 10m over the weekend in Europe, presumably Sporadic-E. So, at last there was somebody to talk to on the higher HF bands.
ReplyDeleteI'll listen for your beacon later today.
The "Knights QRSS" reflector (google for references) is a good place to ask for a 10.140 MHz XTAL. That said, IARU r1 discourages beacons on bands below 14 MHz (10, 7, ...) and activity around 10.140 MHz is intermittent per-choice. An acronym has been found: M.E.P.T. (manned experimental propagation transmission).
ReplyDeleteIf you want to try some 10m QRSS, have a look/listen to the "Italian 28322 QRSS project" (http://28322.blogspot.com). Rome has already a good coverage though!
Bill, for a 10140 kHz crystal try:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.proehl-elektronik.de/qrss/crystals.html
73,
Gerard PA3BCB, a regular SolderSmoke listener