Two Additional VHF beacons

/
Two Additional VHF beacons

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.

Read More

New 2200-Meter Beacon on the Air from Australia

/

The Caboolture Radio Club (VK4QD) in Queensland, Australia, is now operating a beacon on 2200 meters on 137.444 kHz using the call sign VK4RBC. Australia’s telecommunications authority ACMA has granted permission for the continuous operation of the beacon, using WSPR2 (6H00F1D), plus a CW identifier. The power is 1 W EIRP into a 500-meter (1,640-foot) wire at a maximum of 40 meters (131 feet).

“With WH2XND also reliable, we will now see exactly how good the path from USA to VK really is on 2200 meters.”
— Caboolture Radio Club President Roger Crofts, VK4YB

Located in grid square QG62lw, the VK4RBC beacon also receives, which is unusual for a beacon, and it has copied signals from WH2XND (operated by Ron Douglass, NI7J) in Arizona. In the gaps between transmissions, it will report all WSPR decodes to WSPRnet.

Equipment is an Icom IC-718 transceiver and Monitor Sensors TVTR2 2200-meter transverter running 50 W TPO. This is the first Australian beacon that has been granted permission to operate below 28 MHz.


China’s new antenna is five times the size of New York City

/

China has built a giant experimental radio antenna on a piece of land almost five times the size of New York City, according to researchers involved in the highly controversial project.

The Wireless Electromagnetic Method (WEM) project took 13 years to build but researchers said that it was finally ready to emit extremely low frequency radio waves, also known as ELF waves. Those waves have been linked to cancer by the World Health Organisation-affiliated International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Although the project has civilian applications – officially it will be used for earthquake and mineral detection and forms part of China’s 11th five-year plan – it could also play a crucial role in military communications.

Scientists said that its transmissions could be picked up by a submarine lurking hundreds of metres under the sea, thus reducing the vessel’s risk of having to resurface to receive transmissions.

The project follows the construction of China’s first military-grade Super Low Frequency transmission station in 2009.

The next year, a Chinese nuclear submarine successfully communicated with the station from deep water – making China the third country in the world to have established such a submarine communication system, after the United States and Russia.

But the Chinese navy is eager to expand its capacity and has been pouring resources into the more advanced ELF radio technology, which allows submarines to communicate with the command centre from a greater depth and is harder to disrupt.

The Chinese government, however, has played down the importance of the facility, which occupies some 3,700 sq km (1,400 square miles) of land, in information released to the public.

Apart from the need to protect an important strategic asset, some researchers said that the secrecy was to avoid causing public alarm

Media Story - https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2180071/chinas-new-antenna-five-times-size-new-york-city-it-also-cancer