The Perth Morse Training Beacon VK6RCW transmits continuously on 147.375 MHZ FM,
as a service to all radio amateurs and short-wave listeners.
Update
Last Wednesday 26/3/03 the VHF morse beacon VK6RCW 147.375 MHz,
was installed at its temporary home at the Hills AR Group, Lesmurdie.

For a trial period, VK6RCW will transmit only between 8 pm and 10 pm.
The speed schedule will commence at the slowest speed, about 3 wpm,
increasing to about 12 wpm for the final segment of the hour.
Thus two complete segments with different text will be heard each day.

The 80 metre HF beacon, VK6AHR, 3.686 MHz, will transmit for the same time period
in parallel with the VHF beacon but with independent text.

The times can be adjusted, but only if sufficient interest is shown to warrant the change.

Signal strength reports are requested from as many people as possible.
Reports can be made during the Sunday morning WARG Technical and General Net
on VK6RLM repeater, 146.750,
or emailed to VK6SO Phil at   [email protected] 
or to VK6CSW Clive at   [email protected]
Inserted on the 1st March 2003

The beacon was located on private property in the foothills of the Darling Range escarpment, in the suburb of Orange grove, approximately 20 km east of the Perth CBD.
The heart of the machine is a Motorola 6805P6 micro-controller, which runs purpose-designed software (by John VK6NT). The micro-controller is interfaced to a rack-mounted Philips FM-814 VHF high-band transmitter.

The transmitter puts out about 20 Watts of RF, which is fed to a homebrew folded dipole (by Rob VK6TRC) mounted 6 metres up the 40 metre tower. Since the site is so high, this is sufficient to provide coverage of at least 50 km up and down the coastal plain.

This beacon is an excellent training resource for those learning the art of receiving Morse code, as well as for those wishing to maintain their existing skills. The machine is also a most useful signal source for testing and aligning receivers and antennae, checking propagation, and measuring path losses.

The beacon begins each hour by sending text at 3 words per minute (wpm) for 20 minutes. The speed of sending then increases by one word per minute each 5 minutes, and so the last 5 minutes of the hour is sent at 11 words per minute. The text sent is mostly drawn from bulletins posted on the amateur packet radio network, and is almost entirely in plain text format. It contains only letters of the alphabet, the ten digits, and full-stops. The text is stored in a 64kb EPROM (i.e. there are 65536 characters), which means that when the text is repeated it will always be at a different time of day and at a different speed. Note also that every five-minute segment of text is sent at a randomly chosen audio frequency; this is so that your "ear" does not become attuned to only one tone. Each five-minute segment is marked by the sending of the machine's callsign at 20 wpm.

The hourly format of the beacon is as follows, but please note that the machine's internal clock resets to the hour-mark after any interruption to its power supply, and that this can be corrected only by a site-visit by a volunteer.

xx:00 - xx:05	3wpm
xx:05 - xx:10	3wpm
xx:10 - xx:15	3wpm
xx:15 - xx:20	3wpm
xx:20 - xx:25	4wpm
xx:25 - xx:30	5wpm
xx:30 - xx:35	6wpm
xx:35 - xx:40	7wpm
xx:40 - xx:45	8wpm
xx:45 - xx:50	9wpm
xx:50 - xx:55	10wpm
xx:55 - xx:00	11wpm

Orange Grove Site Photos

	View of mast.  VK6RCW antenna is the dipole closest to the bottom.  Click photo for larger image.
	View towards the city of Perth over the coastal plain from ground level near the base of the mast.  Click photo for larger image.

Reports, comments and suggestions regarding the beacon
always welcome and may be e-mailed to 
VK6SO Phil at   [email protected] 
or VK6CSW Clive at   [email protected]

The WIA exists for all Radio Amateurs, Does it speak for you.
Amateurs Unite and Conquer, United we stand, Divided we fall.

Page updated 1st March 2003