Exciting action in store for SARL beacon project

A few months have passed and the South African Radio League (SARL) now have six beacons on the air. It is becoming obvious that the service with its full compliment of beacons and accessories will be a very useful tool for each of the participating parties.

"As we progress we are discovering new features of the beacon service. For next year we have some exciting projects on the drawing board", Lee-Anne McKinnell ZS2LAW said.

The beacon team is working on a prototype of a digital receiver that will monitor the beacons continually up to a period of a few weeks. The receiver stores the call sign and RST in a data logger in the receiver. After a few weeks or earlier the receiver can be plugged into your USB port and it will download its report into a text file. This file contains Date - Time - Call Sign - RST for all the beacons heard at your receiving base station.

The team will supplement this with a computer program called the "Beacon Companion". This program takes the propagation results from your beacon receiver and will predict the propagation to each area of South Africa from your base. In addition you can enter a destination that you wish to communicate with, and the program will tell you what will be the best propagation time for you to do this.

This program also helps you to see propagation patterns and do detailed analysis from the real data gathered at your home base.

The South African Radio League