[RTTY] Active beacon monitoring for HF DXers

[Dave AA6YQ]

The NCDXF/IARU International Beacon Network is an excellent resource for
Dxers interested in assessing "actual propagation", as distinguished
from "predicted propagation". Described in
http://www.ncdxf.org/beacon.htm, this network comprises 18 stations
around the world that continuously transmit on the 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m,
and 10m bands. Given a receiver, an accurate clock, an omnidirectional
antenna, and a quick wrist, one could listen to each of the 18 beacon
station's 10 second broadcasts on each of 5 bands over a 15 minute
(18x10x5 => 900 seconds) interval. 

In practice, manually monitoring all of the beacons takes longer than 15
minutes. The expedient approach is to pick a band and listen for each of
its beacons before moving on to the next. If your antenna is
directional, pointing it at one set of beacons and then listening to
each band of interest will be more efficient, though harder on your
wrist. There are several beacon monitoring software applications that
will tell you where and when to listen; for such applications to be
effective, your PC clock must be accurate to the second -- easily
achievable using freeware utilities (e.g. AboutTime, available via
http://www.arachnoid.com/abouttime/index.html) that use the internet to
synchronize your PC's clock with accurate time standards. MFJ recently
announced a hardware device that uses WWVH to maintain an accurate
timebase and LEDs to indicate which beacon is currently active on what
band.

Last year, I released an application called PropView that uses the
IONCAP engine to generate graphical propagation forecasts. When used in
conjunction with DXView, such forecasts can be produced by entering a
callsign or clicking on a map location. A sample PropView forecast can
be viewed at http://www.qsl.net/propview/propview.jpg .

The purpose of this note is to publicize a new set of capabilities
recently added to PropView. One can now create a beacon monitoring
schedule, either by band, by bearing from your QTH, or by choosing an
arbitrary set of beacons; see http://www.qsl.net/propview/beacons.jpg,
for example. PropView computes the optimal schedule for the beacons you
choose. If Commander (a transceiver control application for Icom,
Kenwood, TenTec, and Yaesu transceivers) is running, PropView can
automatically QSY your radio to monitor the specified beacons; if DXView
is running, PropView can direct it to appropriately rotate your antenna
as required by the monitoring schedule. Together, these applications
make it easy to quickly assess "actual propagation".

PropView, Commander, and DXView are all members of the freeware DXLab
suite, and are available via www.qsl.net/dxlab; given the relatively
rapid release frequency, please review www.qsl.net/dxlab/download.htm
before attempting to download or install any of these applications. If
you have suggestions for improving the new beacon monitoring (or any
other) functionality, please post them on the DXLab reflector at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dxlab/ .

In the meantime, I will be extending PropView to

   - use a soundcard to permit continous capture and analysis of the
specified beacon transmissions

   - use IONCAP to continuously generate forecasts for each beacon/band
combination, contrasting these forecasts with monitored beacon
performance to improve overall forecasting accuracy

    73,

        Dave, AA6YQ