The JAM 187khz LowFer Beacon..

In my previous post about the virtues of microcontrollers in homebrew radio, I had a comment from Lee, who mentioned that he operated a LowFer beacon on 187khz. I’ve been passively interested in LF operation under Part 15 rules for a long time, but haven’t really gotten involved with it much. Lee operates from La Crescenta, about 375 miles south of here by my estimate. He made this little video documenting his setup:



Pretty neat!

If you are interested, you can check out the Long Wave Club of America website to learn more about Part 15 operation. If any of my readers have any other up-to-date or interesting LF/MF part 15 links, I’d love to see them added to the comments.

3 thoughts on “The JAM 187khz LowFer Beacon..”

  1. Lee

    Thanks for posting the Video Mark. I run the setup during the Lowfer season, around Labor Day till about end of March. The current setup uses the same coil elevated to about the roof line and 2 added tophat radials. There is a picture of the elevated coil at LWCA. This puts more RF to the horizon and less into my plumbing, iron bath tub, house frame, water heater, plaster chicken wire, etc… The Win keyer is powered from the 5 volt supply on the AM88 xmiter. Thanks.

  2. Lee

    I plan to put JAM 187.015khz back up around mid September. The success or lack of success of a Lowfer xmit setup depends a lot on the ground radial system. This new season I will adding a Ufer ground connection to my radial ground system. The Cliff notes about this subject is a ground connection to your concrete/rebar system. Thanks to John Davis for this web link about Ufer grounds.
    http://www.scott-inc.com/html/ufer.htm
    I will post a pic of my concret to ground radial system interface when finished at LWCA.
    Lee

  3. Lee

    Beacon JAM 187.015khz is back up with an improved ground plane and confirmed QRSS60 firmware. I am at the mercy of my cheap chinnese freq counter. It reports 187.015khz. I am told that I am closer to 187.016 or 187.0165. What’s a Hertz and a half betwwen lowfers. The message for this season is the letter J at QRSS60 a 5 WPM message and then repeat over and over again. I will post pic’s of the improved ground plane at LWCA. For Security reasons again I will be running Holidays and weekends, Friday noon till Monday noon. And days I have off. To many criminals around here to run un-attended. If conditions get Hot I will take the chance to run un-attended 24/7
    Lee
    KE6PCT

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