In a previous post on the 30th of November 2022, I wrote about how the OZ7IGY team in Denmark had announced that their 8m beacon on 40.071 MHz has been turned off due to increased electricity costs.
The good news is that a few days later on the 5th of December 2022, they announced the following... "The 40 MHz beacon is back on the air. The 10 GHz beacon is now off the air.... OZ7IS"
This is good news as it would be nice to have the 8m beacon operational for the peak of the sunspot cycle.
Annual sponsorship of one individual beacon for one year costs 1400 Danish Krone which is about €190.
OZ7IGY website... http://www.oz7igy.dk/
2022 Reports... Looking at the DX Cluster, there are plenty of reports for the OZ7IGY beacon on 40.071 MHz but they are all from Europe. I'm open to correction on this but I have seen no reports from South Africa, South America or North America.
There are plenty of reports of Trans-Atlantic paths on 40 MHz from the USA to Ireland and UK but what about Denmark?
It's further east and the path would be more northerly. Can it be heard outside of Europe?
A plan of action... The OZ7IGY beacon is on both 28.271 MHz and 40.071 MHz. A good place is start is on 10m. Put your receiver on 28.2702 MHz USB and listen for the CW beacon. Try to use the PI4 software and get experience with it to decode the PI4 signals.
If the 10m beacon is a reasonable signal strength then repeat the experiment on 40.0702 MHz USB.
The key point here is that if you are interested in the 40 MHz band then don't spend all your time on 40.680 MHz. Try the other beacon frequencies and report what you hear.
1 comment:
I have a receiver on 40.070.200MHz and received nothing since the beacon was turned on again, then on 7/1/2023 it appeared from 1505-1610UTC, PI4 signals (call sign only) clearly visible on the waterfall, -12dB/-18dB. Received in IO54 at 1340km.
Phil EI9KP
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