Back in October of 2023, I had a post on the blog about how the HF radio beacon CS3B on the Portuguese island of Madeira was destroyed in a forest wildfire on the 12th of October 2023... See HERE
After a 9-month break, the beacon returned to service on the 3rd of July 2024. The photo above shows the new ICOM IC-7200 which replaces the old one which was destroyed in the fire.
CS3B is part of the International Beacon Project which is a series of HF beacons operating on 14.100, 18.110, 21.150, 24.930 & 28.200 MHz.
New antenna
On the 4th of October, I had a listen and I could hear the beacon on all five frequencies from 20m to 10m in the space of 75-seconds. It's easy enough to try. All you need to do is set the VFO on each band to the frequencies above and the once the sequence starts, you start on 20m and go up a band every 15 seconds.
The beacon is about 2230kms from my location which is ideal for one F2-layer hop from the ionosphere. The fact we're at sunspot maximum and it's a north-south path, F2 layer propagation even on 28 MHz will support these shorter skip distances.
Jerry, AC5JM is the IARU Region 2 HF Beacon Coordinator and over the last few weeks has been updating all of the HF beacons that are in North and South America. The vast majority of these are on the 28 MHz (10m) band.
The old list had become badly out of date with some beacons that hadn't been heard in years. AC5JM has put a lot of work into seeing what beacons have been heard of late and trying to contact other beacon owners to find out the current status.
On the 18th of March 2024, Jerry reported the following... "As of today, and to my knowledge there are officially 310 beacons on the active list in Region 2 but about 49 of them are temporarily down due to equipment failures and QTH moves and another 11 have been inactive for more than 1 year.Β Β
I used RBN (Reverse Beacon Network), emails from beacon owners, and reception reports from others to determine if a beacon is active or not.Β Some that I have have moved to the inactive list may in fact be active.Β Please let me know if any corrections need to be made."
Hereβs a little project I put together on a whim about 18 months ago. It was my tribute to the unlicensed (i.e. pirate) beacon cluster around 4096 KHz. There were several of them operating in full force, with powers ranging from around 100mW to a watt or so a few years ago. Their heyday was about 20 years ago. They were located somewhere in the southwestern deserts of the US, and were powered by batteries and solar panels. The feller who placed and maintained them has stopped their upkeep and, as a result, most, if not all of them, are no longer operational. (There was a small group who also placed these beacons, and I believe they too stopped doing so years ago).
This little beacon, using a commonly available crystal, put out around 30 or 40mW, if I remember correctly, into a 51 ohm resistor as a dummy load. If it were to be connected to an antenna, which will not happen at this frequency, it would need a low pass filter. I havenβt posted the schematic here, for two reasons β
I donβt want to encourage unlicensed operation and
This particular circuit is a bit of a kludgy design, and not one Iβd use anyway.
Iβm posting the photos as a reminder that if you donβt have Manhatttan pads, or donβt want to make your own, then so-called βugly constructionβ is a very viable way of putting circuits together. If you do it well, your circuits can be quite robust and long-lasting. One of Rexβs MePADS was used for the IC, but everything else was built ugly-style.
In the next overhead picture, you can see the ATTiny85 that keys the transmitter. Above and to the right of it, is a 78L05 that supplies 5V to the chip. Directly below the crystal is the oscillator transistor, which is keyed by the transistor to the left of it. On the right is the PA transistor. All 3 transistors are 2N3904βs.
Anyway, thatβs it. I hope this inspires you to get the soldering iron out and build a little circuit. A simple receiver or transmitter, a novelty circuit, or anything really. Building these little things and getting them to work is fun. Incidentally, if youβre interested in listening out for these unlicensed HF beacons, the best source of information is the forums at HF Underground. The forum youβll want is the one called βHF Beaconsβ though there are many other great sub-forums there as well.