g7kse.co.uk » Beacons

Are we at the bottom yet?

Alex — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:05:49 +0000

The beacon station still going strong but no propagation to speak of. I keep checking the site during the day to see how the 4UN1UN beacon is and I can safely say that it’s getting weaker and weaker. With few or no spots at all in many of the days. It makes you think that there is something wrong with your equipment.

Hopefully this long trough will start to pick up so I have a chance to pull together a secret mast for my 6m beam before the XYL finds out what I’ve done just in time for the Es season! I know she doesn’t read this blog too often so I’m sure she’ll not find out what I’m planning.

I still need to do some fault finding with my Softrock and / or build the second kit. I really enjoyed the first one I bought the second one to try and practice a bit more with the SMD soldering, but unfortunately things conspired against me.

Antenna replacement

Alex — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:18:55 +0000

Having run the active antenna for a month or so it seems fairly obvious that it’s just not pulling in the signals. I’ve swapped it for a wire antenna with a 1:1 balun. The wire is approximately 25m long with a 10m coax feeder. It’ll be positioned in a suitable spot in the garden. From early results it’s head and shoulders above the active and electrically small loft one.

Playing with different antennas

Alex — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:09:11 +0000

After having a week off work to do some heavy work in the garden I punctuated the soaking I got by playing about with some antennas.

As the radio hase been relocted away from the other PC the connection to the loft has been lost which is both good and bad. I get to regain my 2m antenna without having to change things around but teh diamond compact Vee (HFV-5) thats I’ve been using has had to be retired. Partly due to excessive corrosion and partly duy to not being able to find a new space for it. So I’m trying out some new antennas whilst the set up os being fiddled with.

1. Sony AN-1 – Active antenna

My first active antenna, bought in 1989 and not used much except with my Sony ICF-2001D when that was my only radio. Its powered by batteries and is essentially a long whip antenna with a pre-amp attached.

2. Home made loop

Just something that interested me so?I decided on making a relatively large loop (1.5m diameter) out of co-ax and other bits lying aorund the garage.

3. Long wire

I ‘own’ approximately 35m of fence which could be used for a long wire antenna. A small connection through the garage wall would give acces to the fence and although at least 4m is close to the house the remainder is moving away and the last 15 m at a?right angle couldn’t be further from the house. At 1.8m high it should give some interesting alternative results from the other options.

I’ll be sapping round these atennas over the next few weeks to compare the results and to?see?if there really is an opportunity to increase the results I get from the beacon monitoring programmme.

Away again

Alex — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:30:42 +0000

I’m away again for a few days so the beacon station has come with me in case the opportunity to have some QSO’s comes my way……here’s hoping

If I can get at least one 6m QSO I’ll over the moon

Beacon station back up and running

Alex — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:47:04 +0000

Another brief few days away with my trusty IC-703 meant that there were no results for last week. things are now back and running again so the resutls should be coming through nicely

Data being recorded but not uploaded

Alex — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:00:21 +0000

I’m having yet more trouble with my netwrok with data being recorded but no ability to upload. I’ll attempt to solve it quickly

Back from holidays

Alex — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:30:48 +0000

The station is back up and running and the results should be coming through some time today. The old laptop is looking even more shakey now and it may fall over at any time so if it does, bear with me until another solution can be found.

Apart from that I hope you enjoy the results

Beacon station goes on holiday

Alex — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:40:55 +0000

The beacon station is packing upit’s bags and going on holiday for a week or so. The station will be inactive from 13th June to 22nd June although I will be operating QRP when time permits from a little bit lower down the country so it’ll be nice to see if the conditions are better than they are here. Currently that couldn’t be too difficult!

Hopefully that’ll be a bit of advanced notice just in case theres a sudden upturn in the (space) weather.

Station open for business

Alex — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:52:14 +0000

a proud day, I’ve spent quite a few man hours getting this site up and running as well as a reasonably reliable Beacon Monitoring station. Name up in lights at NCDXF website and the sucessful pages displaying the rather shady results I’m getting here in the bleak part of Cumbrian winter.

I hope you find them useful, leave a comment or make a suggestion if the data isn’t as you’d like it. Tell your friends and I hope to see you on the Hf bands on PSK31 or SSB when the wind drops and I can raise the antenna

If anyone is interested in how I managed to sort this out for myself then I’ll be putting together a short HOWTO that will compliment the existing ones that I used.

73′s

G7KSE

More beacon station news

Alex — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:53:22 +0000

unfortuantely the ftp upload saga continues with unreliable transfers, crashing ftp programmes all compounding the local broadband issues which I can happily say are now significantly reduced.

So far I have tried the following programmes and so far I have not found one that is truely reliable all the time

1. WinSCP – A very versatile programme but…..Refused to synchronise and hung during transfers

2. FTP synchronizer – Nice and simple but manual only, needed a button press to upload but altogether very reliable. i contacted the developers but not luck

3. AutoFTP – A freeware application that is again nice and simple but suffers from the ‘AutoCrash’ feature so it’s nearly there but not quite robust enough

4. Carbon FTP – Does it all manually but not a hoot when it comes to scheduling unless you are using a different tool to schedule

5. Auto FTP Manager – Not freeware, in fact it’s $40 but if it works in the long run then I’m sure it’ll be worth it. I’ve not tried this for long enough but it seems to be working well.

6. FTP Sync Pro – Again not freeware and uses command line and windows task scheduler, massively gums up the task bar when running every hour so not a runner really. Although having said that it didn’t ever miss a synchronisation when it was running.

Not tried…yet

Peter’s Updater – looks from the description that it may work, but I think I’ve been here before

Save2FTP – Recommended by Mike, VK3AVV in a previous comment. Not freeware but it looks and sounds like a good option and it has a 30 day trials so nothing to lose really.