On Friday I fired up a new propagation beacon K7RA/B, in CN87uq, coordinated by IARU, which assigned the frequency: 28.2833 MHz. Appreciate any reports via QSL card or email. It runs 7 watts into a vertical half-wave dipole. 73, K7RA
Good to have a local beacon for antenna comparisons, I just found it. S3 (on horizontally polarized antenna) in Puyallup / South Hill.
The dipole is vertical, and the low end is about 10 feet above ground. Actual power output is 11 watts.
I heard it a couple of times in July and August down here in Salem on my 4 el OWA at 30 feet but I have a good north facing radio horizon on a high hill above 500 feet in South Salem. The Last time I heard it was back in August and typically it's best in the mornings but since late august to mid sept I was away down at my Prescott Arizona house working on my tower without a radio and I haven't checked it here in CN84 since I got back. It was very weak but when I run my RSP1 as a second receiver on my K3s and engage the SDR Console DSP noise reduction software I can actually gain around a 3 db improvement over the already great K3S sensitivity on CW and just begin to pick it out of the noise.
Me too, I'm 35 miles south of Seattle, 400 ft ASL, clear views to the north, perfect for VHF and higher, I can trip a 900 MHz repeater near Bellingham 84 miles north, and a 2m repeater on Mount McDonald on Vancouver Island. Unfortunately not so great going south, terrain continues to rise in that direction. Working on getting 6m 3 element LFA Yagi up here soon and see what I can do with that. I've noticed that effect over longer paths from 10m through to 70cm for years, not seen an explanation as to why or what causes it, but it soon diminishes a few hours after sunrise.