Tuesday, November 9, 2021

All 5 Greek 10m beacons heard on the 28 MHz band - 9th Nov 2021


Tuesday 9th November 2021: I did a scan of the 28 MHz band this morning and I heard all of the five Greek beacons on the band.

My DX Cluster spots from the morning...

 Spotter Freq. DX Time Info Country
EI7GL 28265.4 SV2RSS/B 11:43 09 Nov IO51TU<F2>KN10LO Greece (3w GP)
EI7GL 28271.6 SV2HQL/B 11:36 09 Nov IO51TU<F2>KM09UV Greece (5w 5/8 vertical)
EI7GL 28269.0 SV6DBG/B 11:34 09 Nov IO51TU<F2>KM09KQ Greece (2w vertical)
EI7GL 28244.4 SV2FQN/B 11:30 09 Nov IO51TU<F2>KN10FC Greece (5w GP)
EI7GL 28224.8 YM7TEN/B 11:28 09 Nov IO51TU<F2>KN91RB Asiatic Turkey
EI7GL 28224.7 IT9EJW/B 11:27 09 Nov IO51TU<F2>JM77NN Sicily 
EI7GL 28201.4 SV2HNE/B 11:25 09 Nov IO51TU<F2>KN10LL Greece (5w GP)
EI7GL 28200.0 VK6RBP/B 09:45 09 Nov IO51TU<F2>OF87AV Australia

I hear several of these every Summer via double hop Sporadic-E but this time around, it was via F2 layer propagation as the solar conditions improve.

With just one F2 hop, the signals are stronger and I heard all five of the Greek beacons in the space of 20 minutes.

As can be seen from the list above, they are transmitting with just a few watts. It's pretty common for me to see my PC decoding FT8 signals from Greece but it nice to be actually listen to the morse code ID from 2700kms away.

One of the more unusual signals is that of SV6DBG/B...


As part of its transmission sequence, it also sends out a RTTY signal.

To be honest, I have no interest in RTTY but I had a quick try off decoding it as the signal was reasonably strong (519). 

I fired up the FLDIGI programme that I had on my PC... selected RTTY 45 (first on the list!)... two Red lines appeared on a waterfall display... I tuned the signal on USB so that the two RTTY tones lined up with the Red lines... a bar went Green... and hey presto, it started decoding!

DE SV6DBG QRP BEACON LOC KM09KQ. IOANNINA, PSE E-MAIL : SV6DBG AT YAHOO.COM

Maybe not the rarest of DX but nice to hear some beacons via F2 layer propagation on the 10m band.

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