VE3TEN Beacon

Starting up the tower. It’s about 30 feet to the top.

The OARC’s 10 m beacon VE3TEN is located a few miles south of Ottawa, near the intersection of Century Road and Ontario Highway 416 (the Veterans Memorial Highway). Current equipment consists of a rack mount box containing the transmitter, power supply and the identifier unit. The antenna, a Ringo Ranger, is mounted approximately 50 feet above ground level. The output of the transmitter has been turned back to 11-12 watts and a ducted cooling system has been installed to increase the life span of the radio. The beacon operates on 28.175 MHz and the mode is frequency shift keying. This means that the radio is on at full output at all times but that the transmit frequency is varied by about 700 hz to provide an audio tone shift at the receiver. FSK can be received by a receiver in any mode.

Tuning in the beacon so that it makes sense requires you tune to 28.175 on CW and read the tone that is there. The spaces between the elements are the higher tone. If that doesn’t work, tune to 28.175.28 on lower sideband for better results.

The antenna at VE3TEN was a casualty of the January 1998 ice storm in eastern Ontario, broken in half and leaning over. Two visits up the tower were made, the first to inspect the antenna and mounting hardware, the second to remove the old unit and install a new antenna and mounting mast.