Recent additions of LA2VHF/4m (2015) and LA2SHF (2018) to our beacon park at Vassfjellet has increased the number of beacons ARK maintains to a total of 4 – from 2 and then 3 to “many”. Unfortunately, information about these beacons is scattered around the blog at la1k.no, and finding information about the frequency or transmitted signal is a challenging search activity (though luckily mostly contained within the beacon tag). But challenging no more! We’ve constructed a new page at https://www.la1k.no/beacons which lists the information in an orderly manner along with the expected transmitted signal and some history, which we hope will make life easier both for ourselves and others.
Beacon containment cabin at Vassfjellet. Photo: LA3WUA.
All our beacons transmit a morse signal at a regular interval. The beacons have been useful for the study of propagation conditions at the covered bands, and for debugging and measurements of our antennas. We plan for the future to extend to a 6m beacon if we can obtain a license for it, as well as possibly covering the entire 1-10 GHz range. We’re also making plans for extending the transmitted signal from a simple morse signal to other digital modes like PI4, to enable easier decoding under weak propagation conditions.
Beacon rack: LA2VHF, LA2UHF and LA2VHF/4m from top to the center of the rack. LA2SHF has been left outside in the cold/on the table. LA2SHF’s sleeve dipole antenna can be seen in the white tube to the left. Photo: LA3WUA.
Like already mentioned on the page: If you hear any of these beacons, let us know! We appreciate reports on DX clusters, or direct contact through email. DX cluster reports or emails from operators who have heard our beacons are invaluable in investigating propagation phenomena.
