New home wanted for the GB3RAL suite of HF & VHF beacons

The RSGB have announced that the GB3RAL suite of HF and VHF beacons at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, England have been turned off due to developments on the site. 

They are now looking for a new home for the beacons somewhere in the UK. It is also hoped that the beacons will be upgraded so that they are all locked with a more modern GPS technology.

Interested parties or groups should contact the Propagation Studies Committee of the RSGB.

The GB3RAL beacon was originally intended to operate on six bands (60m, 10m, 8m, 6m, 5m and 4m) but most have been out of action for some time.

60m - The 60-metre beacon on  5.290 MHz was last spotted on the DX Cluster in December of 2016.

10m - The 10-metre beacon on 28.215 MHz was last spotted as recently as February of 2020 and it was last spotted consistently in July of 2019.

8m - The 8-metre beacon on 40.050 MHz was last spotted in June of 2014. Despite the beacon being listed on current beacon lists, it hasn't been on the air for the last six years.

6m - The 6-metre beacon on 50.050 MHz was last spotted in June 2018.

5m - There was supposed to have been a 5-metre beacon on 60.050 MHz but the DX Cluster has no record of it ever being spotted.

4m - The 4-metre beacon on 70.050 MHz was last spotted in July 2016.

The two beacons of particular interest to me are the ones for 40 MHz and 60 MHz. There are only two beacons in the world currently on air on the 40 MHz band which these are in Ireland and Denmark. On 60 MHz, there is just one beacon in Ireland. It would be great to see these 8m and 5m beacons up and running properly from the UK.

Short Skip opening on 28 MHz - Sun 9th June 2019

Sunday the 9th of June 2019 was one of those days when 28 MHz could be called 'wide open'. There were very strong European stations on the band with openings as well to the Middle East as well as the USA.

The really unusual thing for me was the short skip.

For example, I heard these four beacons via Sporadic-E....

PI7ETE/B with its 300 milliwatt output power is an unusual one but not that rare. Likewise ON0RY/B with 5 watts to a vertical half-wave is unusual but at roughly 900 kms is reasonably regular.

It's when the skip shortens to 500 kms and I can actually hear GB3RAL/B that I know things are special. What was really unusual was that the skip went as short as 350 kms and I heard GW7HDS/B in Wales on 3 watts.

I have heard Wales via Sporadic-E before on 10 metres but it is really rare. It's one thing to decode some FT8 signal buried in the noise but when you can actually hear a decent sounding cw signal then things must be good.

As for the rest of the day, this is a map of the stations heard on 28 MHz...

There are some interesting ones in there. YI3WHR in Iraq and several others from the Middle East.
A ZD7 on St Helena in the South Atlantic. There were two openings to North America... one in the afternoon and one very late in the evening.

This is the European map in more detail...

GB3RAL on 28 MHz via Meteor Scatter

On Friday the 18th of November, I had the rig turned to 28.2150 MHz, the frequency of the GB3RAL 10 metre beacon in the UK.

I was using Spectrum Lab on the PC with the microphone resting on top of the HF rig....an easy way to monitor a frequency while working away on something else. If there is anything there buried in the noise, it will usually show up on the screen.

I've listened to this back in 2008 and found it hard to get a positive ID. It seemed to be just a carrier without any CW.

This time around, I got 'AL' on cw within about 20 minutes so I knew I was hearing it. There were plenty of pings over the space of an hour and then at about 10:28 UTC, I got this fine 4 minute burst...

Right hand side shows the audio freq in Hz.

The tone was easy to hear at times as it transmitted "GB3RAL IO91IN". It certainly wasn't a huge signal...maybe 419 at best but clear all the same.

I'd imagine it would have been really easy to make a contact on a digital mode like JT65.

It was only afterwards that I noticed that the Leonid meteor shower peaks on the 18th of November so perhaps it was due to one of those.

On a positive note, it's good that the new 10 metre vertical seems to be working well.

Beacons on 28 MHz during the Geminids meteor shower...14th Dec 2008

Back in mid November, I tried a few tests listening to the beacon GB3RAL on 28 MHz during the Leonids meteor shower. For the Geminids, I repeated some of the tests but this time, tried listening for some other beacons as well.


Equipment...
Same as the last time....Kenwood transciever on CW, 500 Hz filter. Antenna....old commercial CB type end fed half wave about 4 metres above ground level. I monitored the received audio using the Sprectrum Lab audio analyzer program.

I tried listening for 4 different beacons on 28 MHz......GB3RAL (~500 kms), LA4TEN (~1,200 kms), F5ZWE (~1,300 kms) and DL0IGI (~1,500 kms). I listened at two different times on the 14th of December.....around 01:00 for GB3RAL and LA4TEN and around 09:00 for all 4 beacons.


Listening around 01:00......
GB3RAL.....I received a few bursts from this beacon. Nothing spectacular but it seemed to be there ok. Due to the fact that it has a faulty keyer, I was not able to get a positive ID. Like before, a lot more shows up on the trace than what I could hear by ear.


LA4TEN......This beacon seemed to be very good. It seemed to be nearly always there and at times, it got strong enough so that I could hear the CW by ear and make a positive ID.


Why was the LA4TEN beacon so consistent?

1) My view in that direction is excellent with no obstructions so that may have helped.
2) Is it the fact that 1,200 kms might be a much better distance for meteor scatter. Certainly for GB3RAL at 500 kms, I would expect that more intense meteor bursts might be required (more ionization) and the bursts would be of shorter duration.
3) Perhaps certain directions are better at different times during the shower??
4) Or perhaps it was the power level? LA4TEN is supposed to have an ERP of 250 watts which is very high for a beacon.
5) Of course, there is always the chance that what I heard was actually weak Sporadic-E rather than just meteor scatter propogation. It's seems unlikely at 1am in the morning in December. Considering that the peak of the shower was around this time, it was probably meteor scatter.

Listening around 09:00....
Conditions were worse. I still got a few pings from GB3RAL. I got very little from DL0IGI and F5ZWE. However, LA4TEN seemed as busy as ever! Looking at other sites, the peak was well over at this stage. In addition, the radiant point for the showers in Gemini may have set below the horizon by that time. I wonder though if the LA4 beacon at this stage was Sporadic-E or or not???



Conclusions.......
1) I need to find out what times the radiant point is above the horizon for any future shower and what the likely peak time will be.
2) The results show that meteor scater on 28 MHz is pretty impressive. Everything heard here was with an antenna with no gain.


Useful links......
International Meteor Organisation
G7IZU meteor detection page

Next shower is the Ursids on the 22nd of December.

GB3RAL and the Leonids Meteor Shower...17th Nov 2008

This is a post that I have been meaning to put up for a while. Now that the peak of the Geminids meteor shower is coming up next weekend (13th of Dec), now seems like a good time to put it up.

During the morning of the 17th of November which was supposed to be the peak of the Leonids meteor shower, I tried listening for the GB3RAL beacon in England on 28.215 MHz.

Equipment.....Kenwood TS690s tuned to 28.215.1 MHz on CW (500 Hz filter fitted)
Antenna........Half wave 10 metre vertical at 5 metres AGL
Distance......490 kms due East from here (IO91in<->IO51tu)

As well as listening by ear to the received signals, I put the microphone from the PC next to the rig and monitored the signal with the Spectrum Lab Audio Analyzer program.

After a while, I got a few audible pings that showed on the waterfall dislay so I could see that there was something there around 500 Hz.



At 09:24, I recorded what was the start of a long 5 to 6 minute burst. As you can see above, it started suddenly and after a few minutes, it began to slowly fade away. Listening by ear, I could just about hear that there was something there yet it showed up quite clearly on the waterfall display.

From what I could hear, there was no cw. It was just a constant carrier.


However when I looked at the display closer, I could see that the signal was about 7 Hz wide before finally becoming a narrower signal. I can see from beacon lists that the GB3RAL beacon uses FSK....i.e. the carrier moves in frequency to generate the CW rather than turning on and off. I asked the beacon keeper G0MJW about this and he informed me that the keyer on the beacon has failed and a replacement is under construction.

What I heard and saw was like the beacon keyer was still working (i.e. FSK) except that the frequency shift was now a lot lower than it should be (i.e. 7 Hz instead of say 300 Hz).

Q. Was it GB3RAL that I heard? Probably likely but to be honest, until I can get a positive ID, I will never be 100% sure. I might have a listen again during the Geminids and see how it goes.

Notes...
(1) The various other lines shown on the above displays are mainly just interference generated by the PC. Even though I can't hear them, they show up quite clearly on the display.