[FLWSS] Beacon DX 10 GHz Style

[George Presley]

Hello 10 Geggers,

I've been at it again, doing something that many others have done, but it's
all new for me. So, I did it anyway.

I have driven by a very high tower (guess about 300 ft.) close to where I
live. It's located on Dean Road and Curryford Road here in South-East
Orlando. Every time I pass by, I have wondered if the upper part of the
tower was visible to Joe's beacon. Today I setup at three locations near
this thing, around 6 PM, to give it a try. Here are my results. 

Tower location: 28,30,45.64 N     81,14,11.91 W
Apx. Height 350 ft. Base at 75 ft.
16.4 mi. from Joe's beacon

Position #1, 400 ft. from tower base with the beacon to my back.
  a) Signal very weak and just detected above noise.
  b) Strongest signal was with dish pointed near top of tower.

Position #2, 1,100 ft. from tower (all positions with back to beacon).
  a) Very strong signal. I turned on my preamp on the IC-706 so I could see
     noise on the bar graph. The carrier was 3 to 4 S-units above the noise.
  b) At this distance, I could not define the top vs the remainder of the
tower. At this distance the game was to reduce the earth noise and still
keep as much of the tower in the dish aperture as possible.

Position #3, 2,500 ft.
   a) Very weak signal but not quite as bad as position 1.

Conclusions:
* With a skinny tower you can be too close. Move back a capture more area of
  the tower in the aperture. A broad water tank could be completely
different.
* 2 to 3 times the towers height seems to be the best distance.
* This could be used for reliable short range communication where both
stations do not have ideal views of the horizon.

Note: I'll try off to the side next. I'll look for some other structures in
the area.

TNX Joe.

George K4RSV