AmateurRadio.com

ZQT-263 Thunder Bay, ON (ve3gop)

It's CLE time again!


'CLE's are 'Co-ordinated Listening Events, and NDB DXers around the world focus their listening time on one small slice of the NDB spectrum.


This time the hunting ground is the slice from 260.0 - 269.9 kHz and 440 - 1740kHz.
 

Propagation on MF has been excellent this past week and hopefully will continue to be good.

A worthy target for listeners in North America is ZQT - 263kHz in Thunder Bay, southern Ontario, on the western shores of Lake Superior. ZQT has been logged from coast-to-coast but it's a challenging target. Listen for ZQT's upper sideband on 263.392kHz with your receiver in the CW mode.

When tuning for NDBs, put your receiver in the CW mode and listen for the NDB's CW identifier, repeated every few seconds. Listen for U.S. NDB identifiers approximately 1 kHz higher or lower than the published transmitted frequency since these beacons are modulated with a 1020 Hz tone approximately.

For example, 'AA' near Fargo, ND, transmits on 365 kHz and its upper sideband CW identifier is tuned at 366.025 kHz while its lower sideband CW ident can be tuned at 363.946 kHz. Its USB tone is actually 1025 Hz while its LSB tone is 1054 Hz.

Often, one sideband will be much stronger than the other so if you don't hear the first one, try listening on the other sideband.

Canadian NDBs normally have an USB tone only, usually very close to 400 Hz. They also have a long dash (keydown) following the CW identifier.

All NDBs heard in North America will be listed in the RNA database (updated daily) while those heard in Europe may be found in the REU database. Beacons heard outside of these regions will be found in the RWW database. These databases have recently been re-vamped and are slicker than ever before!

From CLE coordinator Brian Keyte (G3SIA), comes the following CLE info:

Hello all,

These are the final details for this weekend's Coordinated Listening Event which uses some challenging frequencies.

Any first-time CLE logs will also be very welcome, however modest.

 Days:    Friday 25 Sept. - Monday 28 Sept.

 Times:   Start and end at midday, your local time

 Target:  Normal NDBs  (not NAVTEX or amateur beacons)

      QRG:   260.0  -   269.9 kHz

      plus:    440.0  - 1740.0 kHz

Please log the NDBs you can identify that are listed in those ranges plus any UNIDs that you come across there.

North America has a modest number of active NDBs in both ranges.

For Europe listeners there are LOTS of targets in the hf range, but they are mostly well to the east, many of them also competing with strong Broadcasting Stations.

Australia has a few NDBs in both ranges.

You can find details of the beacons in these ranges, lists and maps, if you go to  http://www.ndblist.info/cle.htm  and click on the 'CLE SEEKLIST' link.

If you are disappointed by having very few likely targets, you could maybe listen instead via a remote receiver located nearer to the action?

See  kiwisdr.com  (previously available via sdr.hu) and please also see the important footnote below.

Send your final CLE log to the List, preferably as a plain text email, not in an attachment, with CLE260 and FINAL at the start of its title.

  #   The full Date (or Day no.)  e.g. ‘2020-09-25’ (or just ‘25’) and UTC (the day changes at 00:00         UTC)

  #   kHz (the beacon's nominal published frequency if you know it)

  #   The Call Ident.

Other optional details - Location, Distance, etc. - go LATER in the same line (or in footnotes) Any extra details about new UNIDs, especially strong ones that may be near to you (maybe their approximate direction, etc.) will help us to discover more about them. 

Please make your log useful to old and new members alike by ALWAYS including your own location and brief details of the equipment and aerial(s) that you were using.

We will send an 'Any More Logs?' email at about 19:00 UTC on Tuesday evening so you can check that your log has been found OK.

To be included in the combined results your log must arrive at the very latest by 08:00 UTC on Wednesday 30 Sept.

We hope to complete making the Combined Results within a day or two.

Good listening

Brian and Joachim

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From:      Brian Keyte G3SIA       ndbcle'at'gmail.com

Location:  Surrey,  SE England    (CLE coordinator)

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If you are interested in some remote listening - maybe due to local difficulties - you could use any one remote receiver for your loggings,stating its location and with the owner’s permission if required.

A remote listener may NOT also use another receiver, local or remote, to make further loggings for the same CLE.

These listening events serve several purposes. They