How to setup a 6m beacon according to democratic rules.

actors are Berthold, HB9DCE, Paul, HB9MFD and me, Peter, HB9RUZ

It happened at a time when the cycle 23 had not yet spent the sweet fruits of propagation and when there was much noise to be heard on 110. As it often happened in those frustrating days, the UKSMG announcement page was filled with important answers to less important questions. The noise of the band was so persistent that one day I began to fear that something with my rig might not in be in order. Soon after, I saw the postman parking his car near the house. I dashed outside and kindly asked him to squeeze the door bell for a while. The crackling sound spilling out of my shack now was reassuring. The postman looked so blank that I felt obliged to explain to him why he had helped me so much. I said to him, “You know, the noise of the bell’s spark proved to me my receiver is reproducing outside noise and not only inside noise.“ I really wonder how he will pass that to my neighbours. He seemed a little confused because several weeks before, I had bribed him to use the door bell only once and only in a short burst. “Because the door bell’s noise masks out the weak signals, I want to dig out of the noise, you know“. He did not seem wanting to know.

Both Paul and I regretted the lack of a 6m beacon readable from our QTHs in the northeastern part of HB9 on a regular base. We began to work on the idea of having our own beacon.

Paul, with his aviation background much more skilled in the questions of dependability of continuously operated electronic equipment, favoured buying an ex-military or ex-commercial transceiver and modifying it for our purpose. With hindsight this certainly had been a good proposition, but alas, shortly before I had seen the circuit diagram of a three stage low power beacon on the web. After seeing it, I knew I had to build it. The very simplicity of the schematic was appealing and did not seem to complicated to build, considering my modest background in electronics. At this point we both agreed that all questions concerning the beacons technology should be settled according to democratic rules. We then held a ballot. Its outcome was one against one. Proudly I explained to him, that precisely for such a situation the democratic rules offered an extra vote to the president and that, because not having a president, I would be ready to take over the burden of a president’s responsibility for that very day. We then repeated the ballot and the DIY beacon solution won hands down.

It wasn’t before long that Paul lessened my pride about mastering the democratic rules when stating that he had some doubts about the correctness of the procedure but had let me win, because a president never should be objected.

After considering the beacon’s future location, no more ballot was needed, because we came up with the same conclusions:

• The beacon should be operated at a place where it could be heard, if possible not too strong, by both of us
• The beacon’s power should be low in order to heighten the probability of getting a license for its operation. Please keep in mind that we are power restricted on 6 in HB9.
• For maintenance reasons the beacon should be operated at a place not to far from the two of us.
• Although Paul and I have different ideas concerning the usage of beacons for the prediction of DX (he detects them before making the DX, I do this after, if at all), we both did not want to host it at our own locations. Running the beacon near our  antennas should not preclude the reception of weak signals e.g. other beacons. Tests were done later with the beacon feeding an auxiliary antenna at a distance of several meters from my beam. They showed that the beacon with only  500 mW ERP, due to reciprocal mixing in the transceiver, keyed the background noise even on 50.110 MHz, what definitely was not our intention.

In the person of my ham pal Berthold, luckily help arrived. With his broad experience covering welding microwave towers to the development of solar driven cattle watering equipment, he proved to be an ideal partner for the practical challenges of the beacon project. This showed to be a little bit more complex than thought in the beginning, e.g. authorities made the existence of an association a prerequisite to obtain a licence for the beacons operation. Berth not only was ready to be the third man, without which, according to swiss law, an association cannot be founded. As an owner of a big farmhouse with some surrounding he offered us to host the beacon on his ground.

The whole project suddenly appeared to be well underway:

• The association had been founded
• The application for a low power beacon had been prepared and handed over to a member of our national ham organisation ’USKA’ to be presented by the appropriate liaison official to the licensing authorities.
• Paul had started to build a vertical collinear antenna with some modest gain, which we had found on the net.
• The fact, that the oscillator stage had begun delivering a crystal controlled signal made me believe that the other two stages could be realized with similar ease. (http://www.klove.nl made the crystal promptly and rather cheap; http://www.isotemp.com  remarkably  let us order a single sample of one of their miniaturized crystal ovens)

I should have known better that the dangerous dogs bite you in the very moment you least expect it. In fast succession the following happened:

• The signal after the oscillator stage showed to be stronger than the signal after the driver stage which in turn was stronger than the signal of the PA. Now, belonging to an association of 3 members is risky: The other two members  put me in minority, when I tried to convince them that this power loss was intended, because as widely known PA would mean ’Power Attenuator’.
• The beacon antenna’s SWR peaked at exactly the frequency where it should be lowest.
• We were informed by the USKA official in liaison with the authorities, that our license request had been refused.

That was the evening my wife learnt some previously and henceforth never used expressions from me.

I loudly criticized the denial of the licence but secretly I found that even a bad thing can have its good side: The denial had the other members of the association abstain from making the obvious but disgustingly defaetist proposition to reduce the beacon to its oscillator stage, in order to regain at least some of the missing output power.

Once again the count of unfinished projects in my locker increased by one. Paul being often abroad and Berth and I chasing some ’firsts’, he on LF and yours truly on six, made it easy not to touch the theme ’beacon’ again. Even the existence of the ’beacon club’ was very rarely mentioned by its members during the next months. If it hadn’t been for Paul, who from time to time offered to me to taste a glass or two of wine, to find out whether it could be chosen as beverage for the next AGM of the beacon club, the ’thing’ would have been forgotten.

For about two years this was the state of the affair but then the yearly assembly of our national ham association took place in my hometown. Berth, who was giving company to me, urged me to contact the associations new official in charge with the liaison to the authorities in a renewed effort. I did so and explained the whole story of the beacon and my final deception about its outcome to OM Fred , HB9AAQ. He promised to me to see what could be done. For some more weeks nothing happened and to store the residuals of another unfinished project I had pushed the beacon parts even deeper into the locker. But then, one evening, I got a phone call from him asking me to resubmit all the data of the beacon as fast as possible to him. He would meet an official of the authorities in a short while and would discuss this matter with him.

To make a long story short, our club, after delivering some more paperwork to a kind official of BAKOM, the HB9 licensing authority, got the beacon licence granted and OM Fred in the meantime became president of our national ham organisation USKA. Again Berth and Paul outvoted me, when I tried to convince them, that this certainly had happened as heavens reward for his support of our 6m beacon project.

 The beacon , HB9SIX is in operational status since some weeks and in contrast to its temporary meagre power of about 100mW (no, its not done by the oscillator alone!) could be heard also from abroad in a good opening. Fortunately we did not had to vote for the beacons operating frequency, because that had already be done by the IARU by allocating 50.058 MHz for its operation.

 The surprising grant of the beacons licence had put us under quite a pressure to iron out some of the beacons technical shortcomings and complete it.

In relatively short a time:

• Paul had to do the system integration: by mounting all parts in one single cabinet: solar power regulator, main beacon box, LP Filter and emergency mains PS. Together with the neat wiring harness he made of aviation grade PTFE strand. The beacon being kept in a harsh environment, this not only improves the reliability of its operation, but gives a certain professional touch to the DIY solution.
• Berth had to find out the power level at which the beacon could be operated without causing TVI at his place and do the site preparation with cables and grounding. The vertically polarized beacon antenna he hung high enough in one of his barns, not to be eaten by his TF ponies. For uttermost comfort he connected the beacon site with sense wires with his shack in order to monitor the voltage trend of the batteries.
• I at last had to stabilize the oscillators voltage, introduce an additional buffer stage and build the keyer, whose clever design I found published on the net by OM Bob, W3OTC. This keyer, in contrary to the beacon and antenna, worked without any modification flawlessly from scratch and is easily reprogrammable by means of a laptop even at remote locations.

Thanks to Paul, who had the idea, the beacon runs solar powered. Due to their much higher current consumption, the costs of solar powering a commercial or ex military transceiver would have been prohibitive. Now is this not proofing the importance of applying democratic rules to every technical problem but especially to the design goals of 6m beacons? Paul is still sceptic about that but I am trying to convince him once and for all. I think he soon will be ready to fully recognize it. If not, there will be a ballot before long. But then there are always those lurking doubts about its outcome, because there are three associated members now to vote and a presidents extra vote is no longer needed.

UPDATE:  The association comprises five members now and the beacon is on a mountaintop, mains powered and providing 12 Watts output.

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