WELCOME TO LOWFER BEACON "WV"

187.5 khz
Michael Tyler WA8YWO
Low Frequency Beacons are very interesting to experiment with. They operate in the 160 khz to 190 khz License Free Band.I chose 187.5 khz because that was the crystal I already had on hand. There are requirments that the antenna be no longer than 15 meters and the input power to final amplifier be no more than 1 watt. Most all of the Beacons on the air in this band operate using CW (morse code). The operations are highly coordinated between the Beacon operators. The Long Wave Club has a web site and a message board for exchanging reports. This site can be found at www.lwca.org .

To construct the "Lowfer Beacon" , there are several steps that I followed. First I had to construct the morse code Ider. There are several morse code id boards available commerically but I choose to build my own. The circuit I used is very easy to build and it uses a 2864 eeprom to hold the programming. I have used this circuit in several projects and have been very pleased with it. To make it send dits and dahs, I used ones and zeros in the programming. The schematic for it and the transmitter are shown on the last page of this site.

The transmitter is a circuit that I borrowed from k0LR with a few modifications of my own. It can be found at the Longwave Club web site or you can look at it with modifications on the last page of this site. It is a very simple frequency divider using a 74HC4060 intergrated circuit that functions as the oscillator and frequency divider together. The crystal I am using is a 6 mhz time base crystal divided by 32. This is then fed into the 2N2907-2N2222 Complimentary pair providing the needed 1 watt input.

The antenna is the most difficult part of the project. At this time the Beacon is down for modification as we are construction another antenna that will with stand the West Virginia winter storms.

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