Home

Ham Shack

Antenna Farm

10 GHZ

24 GHZ

Mobile/Rover

My Projects

The 24 GHZ Microwave Page - Projects and Experiments

Building the 24 GHZ Beacon

I always wanted to build a beacon station.  Since I was new to the microwave bands, and there were no beacons on 24GHZ in Utah, and in fact only a few within the United States, it seemed like a good Project to help accelerate my microwave understanding.

I purchased a Kuhne MKU LO 24 Beacon and was able to get it going fairly quickly on the bench in the shack. One of our fellow microwavers, Clint, KA7OEI volunteered to build the Keyer ID.

The beacon went online in February 2009 and is currently located at my QTH at DN40co.  We plan to move the beacon to Nelson Peak is where we also co-locate the WA7GIE 10GHZ beacon. It currently only puts our 8mW and uses a 17 dBi horn as an antenna.

Setting up the 24GHZ Station 

I first purchased the Kuhne MKU LO 12 as the oscillator and then the MKU 24GA as the 24GHZ Transverter.   The next step was to procure a 12" Dish and couple that with a small 24GHZ horn.  I use this easy-to-build station to drive around to see how far we can copy the 24 GHZ Beacon.   So far my DX record is antelope Island which is about 40 miles from the beacon - signal strength was S9!

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of other 24 GHZ hams in the Salt Lake Valley (I can only think of one), so needless to say, things are very lonely at the top!