19 Aug 2016

70cms beacons

Last year, I could always hear the Leicester 70cm beacon GB3LEU on 432.490MHz when listening on my 2m big wheel antenna. I can no longer hear it so there are several possibilities: (1) it is not operational at present, (2) summertime and the attenuation through trees over this 100km (ish) path is now too great, (3) there is water in my antenna or cable? GB3UHF in Kent is operational on 432.430MHz I am told. Although the co-sited GB3VHF beacon is a decent signal on the big-wheel omni on 2m, I have been unable to find the UHF beacon with the same antenna so far. It may be just there, but it is below noise most of the time.

UPDATE 1504z: GB3LEU is shown as "off air". That explains a lot! See http://www.leicestershirerepeatergroup.org.uk/beacons/gb3leu.html
at 15:57
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5 comments:

Bob G3WKW said...

On the GB3VHF web site http://www.gb3vhf.co.uk/GB3VHFReceiving.html there is described a technique for using the JT65 deep search. Iirc you put the beacon call in as yourcall and its locator as your target call, then turn on the deep search and see what happens. If you saw the pictures I sent you there is lots of aircraft reflections on my path but I have found in the past that they mostly disappear around midnight as Heathrow is closed for business until 6am. But you probably have Stansted at the midpoint which probably stays open.


Bob G3WKW

Fri Aug 19, 06:48:00 pm GMT+1
Bob G3WKW said...

http://www.beaconspot.eu/home.php Is a useful resource to confirm beacon status. You can see what is available on what modes, see here a few WSPR beacons.

Fri Aug 19, 06:56:00 pm GMT+1
Roger G3XBM said...

Thanks Bob.

Fri Aug 19, 07:10:00 pm GMT+1
Anonymous said...

Hi Roger,

GB3VHF (2m), GB3UHF (70cm), GB3BAA (6m) & GB3SEE (10GHz) are always good signals into the SUWS WEB SDR, so you can check their on-air status anytime.

http://websdr.suws.org.uk/

Many other UK and European beacons are also audible when conditions are good.

Regards,

Martin - G8JNJ



Sat Aug 20, 01:07:00 pm GMT+1
Roger G3XBM said...

Thank you Martin. That is worth knowing.

Sat Aug 20, 03:02:00 pm GMT+1

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