WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

Posted: **Fri Feb 19, 2010 6:04 am**

6RCT, 6RAW, 6RBN, 6RBU all pretty strong up here over the last day or so. Mt Barker 2m beacon loud and clear

Posted: **Fri Feb 19, 2010 3:33 pm**

Mount Barker repeater still US.

Posted: **Fri Feb 19, 2010 3:57 pm**

WPXZBP wrote:Mount Barker repeater still US.

Is the 70cm beacon working, can't hear it from here ?

Posted: **Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:19 pm**

WPXZBP wrote:Is the 70cm beacon working, can't hear it from here ?

G'day Derek,

The beacon is in the back of my car (Along with a heap of other gear from the site) so this explains not hearing the beacon...!

Will post a full report of damage to the site on the SEG Mailing List in the near future, but there is a bit of work to do!

73's

Posted: **Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:31 pm**

6RLM, 6RTH and the link on 146.675 rhomping into Bunbury again. Mobile in the car, just driving around - no special locations. Going to program all of the beacons from the state into my rig and see what I can hear.

Posted: **Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:37 pm**

What rig are you using? Programming some of the beacons on a 2m FM rig can be difficult.
146.675 should be Northampton. I heard it ident a couple of times this morning.

Posted: **Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:45 pm**

Bonez wrote:6RLM, 6RTH and the link on 146.675 rhomping into Bunbury again. Mobile in the car, just driving around - no special locations. Going to program all of the beacons from the state into my rig and see what I can hear.

If you're picking up RLM, can you get the Ham College Information Beacon on 145.575 ?

Posted: **Fri Feb 19, 2010 11:42 pm**

robbage wrote:What rig are you using? Programming some of the beacons on a 2m FM rig can be difficult.
146.675 should be Northampton. I heard it ident a couple of times this morning.

Yaesu FT-8800R with one of these beasts:

I was getting Northampton as well this afternoon while parked down at the Silos waterfront. No special location there, especially with all that concrete behind me.

Zebedee, I have not tried getting the CW beacon but I will check tomorrow.

Posted: **Sat Feb 20, 2010 12:44 am**

Ham college beacon is voice with information about different things.
HARG has a cw beacon but on HF if I remember correctly.

Posted: **Sat Feb 20, 2010 8:42 am**

Tyranus wrote:Ham college beacon is voice with information about different things.
HARG has a cw beacon but on HF if I remember correctly.

The problem lies with rigs that can't be set less than 5kHz resolution. So you can't, for instance, dial up 144.562 MHz
If you set the steps to 12.5kHz you can get pretty close to some (eg 144.5625)
Another problem is that some of the beacons are CW so all you hear of a weak signal on an FM rig is white noise with slightly less noise in between.

Dunno how up-to-date this list is:

Code: Select all

    144.460 VK6RPH, WA VHF Group beacon, Bickley, CW
    144.560 VK6RBU, WA VHF Group beacon, Bunbury, FSK
    144.562 VK6RSW, WA VHF Group beacon, Augusta, FSK
    144.564 VK6RST, WA VHF Group beacon, Mt Barker, FSK
    144.568 VK6REP, WA VHF Group beacon, Esperance, FSK
    144.576 VK6RSX, WA VHF Group beacon, Dampier, CW

Posted: **Sat Feb 20, 2010 11:27 pm**

robbage wrote:
Tyranus wrote:Ham college beacon is voice with information about different things.
HARG has a cw beacon but on HF if I remember correctly.
The problem lies with rigs that can't be set less than 5kHz resolution. So you can't, for instance, dial up 144.562 MHz
If you set the steps to 12.5kHz you can get pretty close to some (eg 144.5625)
Another problem is that some of the beacons are CW so all you hear of a weak signal on an FM rig is white noise with slightly less noise in between.

Dunno how up-to-date this list is:
Code: Select all
    144.460 VK6RPH, WA VHF Group beacon, Bickley, CW
    144.560 VK6RBU, WA VHF Group beacon, Bunbury, FSK
    144.562 VK6RSW, WA VHF Group beacon, Augusta, FSK
    144.564 VK6RST, WA VHF Group beacon, Mt Barker, FSK
    144.568 VK6REP, WA VHF Group beacon, Esperance, FSK
    144.576 VK6RSX, WA VHF Group beacon, Dampier, CW

My rig is set to 5kHz steps and I started to program all of the beacons in and very quickly realised that they were all so close to each other.
I programmed in Augusta first, 144.5625 (on my rig - it automatically adjusted) and I could hear it loud and clear straight away. After a bit more investigation I realised that the Bunbury beacon spans about 15kHz, from 144.555 to 144.570, so any hopes of me hearing the others that are 2kHz apart are pretty much shot.

While I'm posting, drove home from work tonight in Bunbury at 10:30pm and was getting 6RLM S3, 6RAW (dont know if it was noise or a signal) and very small snippets of the 2m Beacon at Walliston were coming through. (VK6RPH)

Posted: **Sat Feb 20, 2010 11:41 pm**

Bonez wrote:After a bit more investigation I realised that the Bunbury beacon spans about 15kHz, from 144.555 to 144.570, so any hopes of me hearing the others that are 2kHz apart are pretty much shot.

It won't be the beacon that wide, rather your receiver which is about 16kHz bandwidth. But yeah, it will wipe out any weak signals. Time to get yourself an all-mode rig

Posted: **Sun Feb 21, 2010 1:48 am**

robbage wrote:
Bonez wrote:After a bit more investigation I realised that the Bunbury beacon spans about 15kHz, from 144.555 to 144.570, so any hopes of me hearing the others that are 2kHz apart are pretty much shot.
It won't be the beacon that wide, rather your receiver which is about 16kHz bandwidth. But yeah, it will wipe out any weak signals. Time to get yourself an all-mode rig

Absolutely, it is my rig. Do you want to buy me a nice fancy all-mode rig? Cause I certainly can't afford one on an apprenticeship wage...

Posted: **Tue Feb 23, 2010 9:08 am**

Very good conditions last night between 7:30pm-8pm sitting in my driveway. My house is in a gully, has a 20ft high limestone wall on the eastern side too.

VK6RLM - S1
VK6RNA 70cm - S6, put out a couple of calls but no response.
VK6RTH - S1
VK6RMS - S1
VK6RAL - Albany, S3, could hear ident but not get back in to it
VK6RNC - Heard someone connect to the link but I could not access it. Receiving at S2/S3
VK6RBN Busselton - S3... Could only just trigger it but that repeater is as deaf as they come anyway

RNA was the one that really surprised me. It was so crystal clear. At the same time I was listening to Nova 937 and 92.9 in my car so conditions were good.

Posted: **Sat Mar 13, 2010 4:23 pm**

DX going off in Bunbury again. From my car parked in town on a hill:

RNC, RFM, RLM, RAW (Katanning), RCT (Cataby), RMS (Saddleback), RBN (Busso), RNA 70cm all full scale

RAP I could hardly hear

Had a simplex convo on 146.425 with VK6NU in Gwelup (Base using 50w) about 7/8, and another mobile station in Malaga on Reid hwy about 2/2 but could still hear him and he could hear me

RVP 70cm could just hear it

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