Madeira HF beacon CS3B back on air after forest fire

Back in October of 2023, I had a post on the blog about how the HF radio beacon CS3B on the Portuguese island of Madeira was destroyed in a forest wildfire on the 12th of October 2023... See HERE

After a 9-month break, the beacon returned to service on the 3rd of July 2024. The photo above shows the new ICOM IC-7200 which replaces the old one which was destroyed in the fire.

CS3B is part of the International Beacon Project which is a series of HF beacons operating on 14.100, 18.110, 21.150, 24.930 & 28.200 MHz.

New antenna

On the 4th of October, I had a listen and I could hear the beacon on all five frequencies from 20m to 10m in the space of 75-seconds. It's easy enough to try. All you need to do is set the VFO on each band to the frequencies above and the once the sequence starts, you start on 20m and go up a band every 15 seconds.

The sequence for the beacon can be found here.. https://www.ncdxf.org/beacon/

The beacon is about 2230kms from my location which is ideal for one F2-layer hop from the ionosphere. The fact we're at sunspot maximum and it's a north-south path, F2 layer propagation even on 28 MHz will support these shorter skip distances.

If you want to check the path to your location then use this site and mess about with the values... https://soundbytes.asia/proppy/p2p

Updated HF beacon list for IARU Region 2 - Mar 2024

Jerry, AC5JM is the IARU Region 2 HF Beacon Coordinator and over the last few weeks has been updating all of the HF beacons that are in North and South America. The vast majority of these are on the 28 MHz (10m) band.

The old list had become badly out of date with some beacons that hadn't been heard in years. AC5JM has put a lot of work into seeing what beacons have been heard of late and trying to contact other beacon owners to find out the current status.

On the 18th of March 2024, Jerry reported the following... "As of today, and to my knowledge there are officially 310 beacons on the active list in Region 2 but about 49 of them are temporarily down due to equipment failures and QTH moves and another 11 have been inactive for more than 1 year.  

I used RBN (Reverse Beacon Network), emails from beacon owners, and reception reports from others to determine if a beacon is active or not.  Some that I have have moved to the inactive list may in fact be active.  Please let me know if any corrections need to be made."

The list can be viewed from the following link... https://www.iaru-r2.org/en/on-the-air/beacon-network/

Madeira HF beacon CS3B destroyed in wildfire - Oct 2023

The radio beacon CS3B on the Portuguese island of Madeira was destroyed in a wildfire on the 12th of October 2023. The image above shows the destroyed radio and what the original ICOM 7200 would have look like. This new radio was only installed in September of 2023

The CS3B was part of the International Beacon Project which is a series of HF beacons operating on 14.100, 18.110, 21.150, 24.930 & 28.200 MHz.

The location of CS3B is shown above off the north-west coast of Africa and it was an ideal location for testing radio propagation on the HF bands to Europe and to North America.

The amount of fire damage to the site was quite extensive as the building housing the beacon was destroyed as well as the antenna as can be seen below.

It's very likely that any traps on the antenna will have been damaged as well by the heat and I suspect the whole antenna will need to be replaced.

The chart above from the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) site shows the beacon operating on the 12th of October 2023 until it stopped suddenly around 15:00 UTC.

As can be seen from the chart above, the last reception reports were for 14:57 UTC.

Considering the extensive damage to the beacon and building, this HF beacon is likely to be off air for some time.

Link... IARU International Beacon Project