Kim,

Welcome to ham radio! Congratulations on passing your F-call. I have a confession to make - I can't receive CW either - well at least not very well. I am making an effort to learn, but I am progressing rather slowly.

Thanks for the beacon report, I'll add it to the list.

I took a look at the regulations on the ACA website, it appears Foundation calls must use commercially manufactured transmitting equipment. I think that's a pretty terrible regulation, but I suppose it is a good incentive to upgrade to an Unrestricted! Otherwise the only regulation related to beacon operations I could find is the usual requirement to identify at least once every 15 minutes.

My beacon is currently on 3.581 MHz +/- a little for drift. The message was recently slowed to 10 WPM and has a 30 second long solid carrier period between repeats which should make it easily identifiable even if you can't read the call sign. The call is repeated three times "VK2ZAY/B" at the start of the message after the 30 seconds of carrier. It also sends its location to within a few metres and a Maidenhead locator along with an email and URL.

There is no schedule at present, I just turn it on and off manually. I was thinking of putting it on a time switch. I have some plans to use the same antenna for RX, so sharing around the antenna will become a constraint.

If you need polyvaricons or iron powder toroids for the antenna matching unit drop me your postal address in an email and I'll send you some.

Regards,

Alan

Hi Alan,

I forgot to mention that I'm in Mount Barker in South Australia. Just so that you've an idea where I'm listening from.

73,

Kim

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VK5FNET

Hi Alan,

I've been listening to a cw beacon on 3.579Mc for some time. I found your site by searching the frequency and its the only one I can find thats remotely close. Soon when I can actually copy CW I might be able to confirm its your beacon =) I've only been an F-call for a couple of months, there is amazing amount of stuff to learn =)

The only time of day that I've had any success hearing it is in the afternoon, but the noise is quite amazing at the moment.

Do you have a schedule for operation for your beacon?

I have been thinking about doing something similar. I need to figure out if I can on my F-call first, but everything else is applicable to my 80m rig.

I have quite enjoyed reading about your projects. It has certainly inspired me to build a few things and I'm gathering to components to make a 80m endfed halfwave and tuner as reception of the WIA broadcast is quite good on 80m, not so good on 40m.

73,

Kim

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VF5FNET