USA BEACON NOW QRV ON 70MHz

[G4ASR]

As of 12:00 UTC May 3rd, a Radio Science E-Skip propagation beacon has been activated from the eastern coast of North America. QRG is 70.005MHz. ERP is currently 3kW aimed at the EU.

The beacon is scheduled to run 24 hours a day until September 1st unless there are technical issues precluding that.

The beacon is non-Amateur and sadly no 2-way QSOs could take place.

Any and all reception reports to: wa1zms

[VE9AA]

Have copied this the past few hours via Es....listen to it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nukkB3TL0SI

At the time of my recording 2134z it was weak....but in the past couple of hours it's been 5NN+20db for lengths of time....my 4m antenna?
A little chunk of wire not far off the ground! (*my 6m tower blew over the other day....)

My hat is off to WA1ZMS for great work.

Mike ve9aa fn66na

[K1SIX]

After finally repairing my Vine 6EL after winter wind damage, I can assure you that the WE9XFT/B is "serious". I am hearing it continuously via tropo/ meteor scatter here in SW New Hampshire at 896km distance. Great job WA1ZMS!!

[OH1ZAA]

Good to study the YouTube recording of WE9XFT/B, so identification will be easier during openings. Guess it will come through a couple of times this summer somewhere in Europe. At 900 km the ionoscatter component is possibly stronger than the troposcatter component most of the time, but most important is that there is a 3 kW ERP signal to look for at any time of day --- There is several hundred hours of 70 MHz Es-skip each summer, so multi-hop is available if we are lucky to be in the right spot with respect to path geometry --- Got OX4MB/B (70.012-GP47TA) in, last year, so this one would be a nice upgrade! --- 73, "Zaba" OH1ZAA/OHoMZA ---