Well, the bands were really dead this evening, so I decided to try to see if I could find some software that might be useful. I sometimes monitor various beacons, and the NCDXF beacons are the most famous. There is luckily this neat little program:
available for Linux that can help you figure out what beacon you are hearing. It’s even got a nice little graphical display of the earth, showing what portions are lit and which are dark, and what the bearing is to the transmitting beacon.
For instance, tonight I could hear VE8AT in Canada fairly clearly, of course W6WX (it’s only 98 km from here), and KH6WHO in Hawaii.