A couple of years back I was reading an article about 10-Meter beacons from Monitoring Times (May 2007) about how beacons are used to help track and predict radio propagation in the HF (high-frequency) bands. The article featured photos of QSL cards from beacon stations. I found this fascinating and immediately tried to tune in some beacons using my Icom IC-745 HF radio. I was able to hear the WA6APQ beacon on 28.244 MHz about 30 miles away in Long Beach, CA.

Soon I was itching to be on the transmitting side of beaconing so I contacted Bill (WJ5O) who at the time was the IARU (International Amateur Radio Union) Region 2 Beacon Coordinator. He gave me some excellent tips and ideas and I went away to plan my beacon station

By the time I had my equipment together the Coordinator torch had been passed from Bill to Denny. I contacted Denny and he assigned me a frequency of 28.207 MHz on which to transmit. My beacon has been “on the air” since April 30, 2019 and has its own web page here: https://dm04.org

You can find information on my beacon site about time of day when propagation is best as well as which days of the year I’ve experienced the highest number of reported receptions. Also, there is a QSL form where you can submit your reception report online.

In addition to people tuning in the beacon and reporting their reception of my station, the Reverse Beacon Network is a group of stations around the world that monitor the 10 Meter beacon sub-band (28.200 to 28.300 MHz) 24 hours a day automatically reporting reception of beacons via the internet to a central database.