Tuning 10 meter amateur radio beacons is fun and a great way to check propagation conditions

[@Buzzygirl63]

10 meter beacons are my favorites - I can frequently get them from thousands of miles away from my Midwest US location using nothing but a good portable receiver and clip-on antenna. Which reminds me... I need to get back into this! I moved last summer and haven't unpacked my radio equipment yet. Thanks for these beacon videos, it's a fun radio pursuit that doesn't require a huge layout of money, and listening to them will definitely help you to brush up your CW listening skills.

[@HamRadioLady]

Awesome, Gilles. I also listen for beacons. It's something fun to do on this especially rainy day here in California where we are getting this absolutely huge storm.

[@OfficialSWLchannel]

happy new year !

[@LuisPerez-xe6nu]

Gilles, thanks for the video. I am interested in the FDX10, but I am not sure if the CW decoder is capable to decode sporadic CW beacon signals such as the IBP signals at 14.100, 18.110, 21.150, 24.930, and 28.200. The challenge with those is that due to propagation conditions, there are blank spaces or silence between one or more beacons as these are located in different countries, this makes it challenging for CW decoders that are not sensitive enough to decode the sporadic signals. Have you tried to decode those?

[@vtradio]

Bummer man. I turned my Beacon off for a few minutes last night to test something out, and I forgot to turn it back on. 73 Paul AA1SU/B 28.243 MHz

[@4nradio782]

Nice! I haven't tried this yet on my FTDX10. It would be interesting to see if 10 meter reception is better than my Perseus. You can find an interesting article on 10m beacon listening published recently in the SWLing Post. Do you find AMP1 satisfactory on 10 meters, or have you had to bump to AMP2 on occasion?

[@dieselten01]

I noticed your radio mode is CW-U. What’s the difference from just CW? Is one better for beacons? Thanks

[@kc1nzo]

CW-U is CW with the receiver on USB mode. The CW-U mode on the radio enables the cw key input for tx control and puts receive in USB mode for demodulating the CW signals. It somerimes also enables a narrow receive bandwidth filter If you wantto filter out other signals on nearby frequencies. If you want it in LSB mode but with the CW key and/or narrow receive filter, put it in CW-L mode. Some radios just have a CW mode and have a U/L setting in a menu somewhere, and some (mostly older ones) only have a CW setting in USB mode.

[@kc1nzo]

CW-U is just specifying which side of the inserted carrier wave is being demodulated, so CW, CW-U and CW-L are the same.