THE WA1ZMS BEACON

Brian Justin, WA1ZMS, has recently installed a beacon on 144 MHz from a very nice mountain location near his home in Virginia. The beacon is located on Apple Orchard Mountain, a peak along the Blueridge Parkway. It is at FM07FM and 4200 feet above sea level. It transmits on 144.285 MHz slow speed CW, with an identifier followed by a 30 second steady tone. Brian has locked the beacon frequency utilizing a surplus HP Z3801 GPS disciplined oscillator. The end result is that you can count on it to be at 144.285000 MHz.

Directive Systems is pleased to have the WA1ZMS beacon utilize our 144 MHz LVA antenna, the DPM144-5LVA. It is in a stacked configuration. Brian's reasoning was to have the beacon operate as a good transoceanic tool that could illuminate a large area across the Atlantic, and take advantage of enhanced propagation wherever and when ever it occurred. The good news about using the LVA for a beacon here is that it will "light up" a huge part of the East and Northeast as well. Currently, Brian has the array aimed at about 60 degrees true azimuth. The pattern of the LVA antenna is such that amateurs all over the Eastern Seaboard are hearing the beacon quite well. When it first became operational, many people thought the band was open!! After a few days and weeks of consistent signals, people are realizing that WA1ZMS/b is covering a wide area with great signals, and will be a fantastic propagation indicator.

The beacon particulars as related by WA1ZMS:

Callsign: WA1ZMS

Freq 144.285000MHz

QTH: FM07fm

Freq reference: 10MHz HP Z3801A

Freq accuracy: 1E-9 or better

Antenna: 2-yagi pair, Directive Systems DPM144-5 Stacked vertically.

Antenna gain: 11.5dBd

Radiated power: 1400W ERPd

WA1ZMS installing the two yagis on the tower in Fall, 2006. Note the star guy. It is about 12 ft across!

The CW transmission is not yet time synchronized to UTC but will be once Dave, WW2R has finished a new beacon keyer design. For now, the CW is simulcasting with the on site 33cm beacon and sends: "DE WA1ZMS/B FM07FM AT 4200FT AMSL" followed by 30 seconds of carrier. The CW speed is about 8WPM. So far there have been plenty of heard reports with consistent reception possible in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Here in Maine, it is audible at the noise level at a distance of over 600 miles!! With the relatively high ERP, meteor bursts are easily heard even on small antennas within the antenna footprint. The geographical coverage is quite large, with the -3 dB beamwidth covering from Hagerstown, MD to Binghamton, NY, to Burlington, VT, and down to about Richmond, VA. The boresight heading puts the middle of the main lobe South of New England at about Nantucket Island. The -10 dB beamwidth covers from Buffalo, NY to just South of Norfolk, Va. The large area of coverage bodes well for a good chance of reception from anywhere "across the pond".

Two views of the completed installation. Note the large dishes and the star guying required for stability.

The WA1ZMS beacon as heard in Maine FN43MJ, at 606 miles! Predetection bandwidth was 1.8 kHz. The bright spots are meteor bursts. This signal was recorded at 10:00 AM on November 17, 2006. The time marks are every 15 seconds, so you can see that there were six meteor pings in a bit over 30 seconds. The carrier is clearly visible on the waterfall display in between meteor bursts. Note the intense doppler shift on several of those bursts. The last one (upper portion of screen) was a screamer that started about 300 Hz below the 630 Hz carrier tone frequency. You can also see another beacon just above the 1300 Hz mark. I believe that it is VE1CBC/B less than 1 kHz away, and off the back of the beam.