Category Archives: Beacons

Short opening on September 6th 2012

September 7th, 2012

After spending a day in Leipzig, I came home quite late. In the train already I had a look to the KST chat and on the Hepburn index. Both promised an interesting evening. After turning the dish to the west, I heard GB3USK in IO81 (783 km) very loud via tropo. In the following hours I could work G4EAT in JO01, G4ALY in IO70 (888 km), GU6EFB  in IN89 (778 km), G6HIE in IO90 and F9OE in IN78 (954 km) on 1296 MHz. The most impressive signal was the one of Keith, GU6EFB from Guernsey, who was 59 here in Mainz, by running only 10 W in SSB.

Opening on September 6th – QSOs on 23 cm – QRB > 500 km

Aircraft scatter – very special

August 27th, 2012

In the evening I had the dish pointing to the moon to perform some echo tests. After finishig that, there was some office work to do. The pc was still tracking the moon and showing the spectrum around 1296.030 in a waterfall diagram. After a while I noticed a strong signal at  .050 keyed in F2. It lasted just for a few seconds before it disappeared. I watched the display and could see it every now and then with various signal strength. Very soon I identified it as HB9BBD. This beacon is always very strong here – as long as the dish is turned in the right direction (175°), but at present it was pointing to the moon with an azimuth of 130° and an elevation of 10°. While thinking about that, I was looking at the moon outside the window, hearing the signal coming up in QSB and seeing a plane passing the moon.

Since Frankfurt airport is not too far from my QTH in Mainz, planes are passing by in a wide variety of altitudes. Using planefinder.com I was was able to find a correlation between reflections and planes flying in certain heigths, distances and directions. May be it will be possible to use aircrafts not only for forward scatter. If anyone is interested to try aircraft side scatter, please contact me. It could be helpful, when obstructions like noise sources, buildings or mountains are blocking the direct path.