I’m surprised how well my random wire antenna seems to work. Even with only 30W, I’m making plenty of contacts. I’ve even made my first 80m DX contact—8P6JD in Barbados.
I thought I’d be making more short-distance contacts, though, because the max height of the random wire is only about 20 feet. Instead, I’m working a lot of New England stations. The closest has been a guy in Edgarton, WV.
The noise level seems rather high, though. It’s a solid S5 or higher. Perhaps the polarization of the antenna is mostly vertical. That might explain both the long skip and high noise level.
Longwave Listening
Last night, I used the 746’s keyboard to QSY to 3530 kHz…or so I thought. I missed the last zero and would up on 353 kHz instead. There, I heard an interesting signal sending QG, then a long dah over and over. I did a Google search for “QG 353” and found that it was a beacon station at the Windsor, ON airport.
I tuned around a bit and heard another station calling “RYS” on 420 kHz. I did another Google search and found this Longwave Beacon Loggings page. It notes that RYS is on 419 kHz and located on Grosse Ile, here in Michigan. It lists about 70 beacon stations that the author has logged.
He also has a page with various Longwave and Beacon Links. One of the more interesting links there—for amateur radio operators anyway—is the AMRAD Low Frequency Web Page. This page describes some of the experimentation being carried on by hams in the longwave region.
Another One for the Collection
Finally, I have another station to add to my collection of QSLs from stations whose callsigns spell words. I just worked Gerald K4IN, Mobile, AL this morning.
John says
I have over 150 Longwave airport beacons logged. Farthest was in Manitoba. The US beacons are going dark one at a time since GPS is being used more in aircraft now. Canadian beacons are still holding on. I use a FT990 radio tor listening on LW and before I used a TS440s, Either the 160M dipole or 40M fullwave loop seem to be good antenns for LW.