Impending changes to the 5MHz beacon chain

During the summer, the 5MHz Working Group reviewed certain aspects of the 5MHz Experiment and agreed a number of changes and improvements. These will be implemented over the next few months.

The largest change is that it has been decided to remove the 0.5ms pulse sequence at the end of each beacon transmission.

It has also been decided to build a new beacon for GB3RAL. The new design will incorporate a PSK31 transmission in the place of the pulse sequence. The design of the other two 5MHz beacons does not allow this addition. A date for these changes has not been set, but it is hoped to complete the changes before the end of the year.

The pulse sequence was included in the beacon transmission sequence to allow the propagation paths to be studied.

Peter Martinez, G3PLX wrote an article for the January 2006 issue of RadCom, "5MHz beacon sounder experiment".
The article included some interesting scattergrams of the different paths taken by the signals from the beacons.

For further information about the 5MHz beacons, see www.rsgb.org/spectrumforum/hf/5mhzbeacons.php

Source: GB2RS

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