The 10m Vara band is by and large underutilised. I make some efforts to change that as propagation improves. The solar flux index is 171 today. In my efforts to pump life into 10m Vara, the maximum beacon frequency of every 15 minutes appears to be too long. I know there are reasons for making 15 minutes minimum. However, while on 20m and probably also 40m this makes good sense, I challenge that it makes sense on an idling 10m Vara calling channel.
Can we have a special allowance for 10m Varan beaconing? I mean a beacon setting that only applies to 10m (and maybe 12m) as well. There is very often good propagation and low noise, however nobody is on 10m to utilise that.
If we have a beacon every 15 minutes only, then everyone interested in 10m Vara has to stay on 10m for up to 15 minutes to check whether anyone is there.
The downside is that under good 10m short skip condx the beaconing might flood the calling channel. This can however be avoided by a feedback loop utilising the individual beacon list. If there were many beacons in an hour's time, then the beacon frequency can be automatically reduced as needed. If 10m shortskip is wide open, then 15 minutes between two beacon transmissions is probably a sound value.
Enough food for some more thought, I guess.
73
Dieter, VK3FFB
If you are using Omnirig you can start 2 or 3 sessions of VarAC with the same radio so that you can test whether it really makes a difference if more beacons are sent.
If you start the second beacon 8 min later or 5 min later with 3 sessions later you have something that can be used to see if it makes a different.