Friday, June 3, 2011

A fishy tale about WSPR on 28 MHz..

Friday morning 3rd June 2011.......Just started listening for WSPR signals early in the morning. After a few minutes, the trace looked like this.

The obvious horizontal line is a WSPR signal from a French station via Sporadic-E...........but all the little squiggles?

These are from illegal fishing beacons operating at 28 MHz. Basically, they turn on for about 10 seconds......drifting upwards slowly in frequency and then they give out their ID in morse. In this particular case, it just so happens to be 'AC'.

I have heard this one several times before as I had the rig turned on in the background.....but this was the first time that I actually noticed it appearing on the WSPR trace.

As for it's location???

For anyone not using WSPR, have a listen to 28.124.6 MHz on USB and see if you can hear it.

3 comments:

MW0MJB said...

Hello John, Thanks for posting this, I'll keep a look out sometime today and let you know if I hear anything. 73 Mark

MW0MJB said...

Nothing so far John...I'll keep a look out this week coming...73 from Sunny warm West Wales..:o) ..Mark

John, EI7GL said...

I didn't hear this morning either although the band was open to Germany.

When I heard it yesterday, I think perhaps the band was open to the SE so maybe it was somewhere in the Med? Impossible to tell though. I often hear other ones in the beacon band as well.