International Beacon Project Upgrade

All five Northern California DX Foundation/IARU HF propagation beacons in IARU Region 3 covering the Asia-Pacific are being upgraded. The main part of the upgrade is the NCDXF 2.0 beacon controller, based on the Arduino platform making it easier to support and open for future enhancements.

Already completing the upgrade are VK6RMB West Australia, and 4S7B Sri Lanka. Both now welcome reception reports. Walt Wilson N6XG of the NCDXF said VR2ZRE Hong Kong was also on air with a new antenna and meeting beacon performance expectations. HARTS was to install the hardware.
In other progress, the JARL International Section Manager, Ken Yamamoto JA1CJP said permission has been gained for the upgrade JA2IGY, and planning was under way.

The ZL6B beacon is run by the NZART, with Beacon Coordinator Robert Lambert ZL2BFY reporting it had been running for the past two years with known faults, but expected the replacement to be installed this year. All beacons transmit CW at 22wpm on 14.100, 18.110, 21,150, 24.930, and 28.200. Each beacon transmits once on each band once every three minutes, 24 hours a day. The callsign and the first dash are sent at 100 watts. The remaining dashes are sent at 10 watts, 1 watt and 100 milliwatts. At the end of each 10 second transmission, the beacon steps to the next higher band and the next beacon in the sequence begins transmitting.

There are another 13 around the world in IARU Region 1 and Region 2 that indicate the current condition of the ionosphere. More information about them are on IARU website Link and the North Carolina DX Foundation website via this Link

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