The West Australian Repeater Group Inc. also sponsor and maintain two beacon transmitter services for amateur operators.

HF

VK6RBP at Roleystone on behalf of the Wireless Institute of Australia for the Northern California DX Foundation. Part of the world wide network of 18 HF propagation beacons.? Operates on 14.100MHz, 18.110MHz, 21.150MHz, 24.930MHz & 28.200MHz every 3 minutes, 24 hours per day.? Callsign is sent at 22wpm and then followed by four 1 second dashes at 100w, 10w, 1w and 0.1w (-10db) increments sequentially on each frequency.

VHF?

VK6RCW is the morse practice beacon at Orange Grove on 147.375MHz.? This beacon transmits text 24 hours per day to polish your CW skills.? The beacon sends at 3wpm for the first 20 minutes of every hour, then increases 1wpm every 5 minute interval.? By 55 minutes past every hour it is send at 11wpm.? The end of each 5 minute interval is marked by the beacon sending its callsign at 22wpm.

The text sent has mostly been drawn from bulletins posted on the packet network in plain text and contains letters numbers and full stops.? The pitch of the morse is also varied so your ear doesn’t become accustomed to a single frequency.

The beacon is also a useful signal source for testing and aligning antennas and receivers, checking propagation and path loss measurement.