The SARL Beacon Workgroup has been engaged in putting together a proposal for two additional beacons to be used for propagation studies.

One beacon is to be deployed near Bethlehem in the Free State and a second beacon somewhere in the centre of the country equidistant from the Western Cape and Gauteng where the two centres of activity are on the VHF and above bands.

The working group has made the decision to go ahead and procure the necessary equipment for the beacons and to deploy the beacon in Bethlehem first and use this site as the test site while efforts are made to procure a site in the central Karoo. A site has been identified in the Karoo and the working group is now busy putting a proposal together to take to the owner of the site.

The working group has also been discussing VHF propagation and forecasting over the inland areas. Along the coast there are the Hepburn charts, but these charts do not really help for the inland areas, or so it is believed. Over the last months some interesting correlations have been made between the actual propagation being experienced by the various forecasting models. It turns out that the Hepburn charts do give an indication of possible band openings inland. Even more interesting however, are the correlations being made between the actual propagation and some of the weather forecasting models available.

South African Radio League - http://www.sarl.org.za/Default.asp