[Lowfer] Monitor Freqs

[Mike Staines]

> What's a drift net beacon?

Oh, how the times have changed...  8-)

Once upon a time, there was an evil witch named GWEN. GWEN cast a spell on
the lowfer bands that caused them to be cluttered with data bursts.

So all the people who listened to beacons on 1750 meters all switched up to
the high end of the AM broadcast band to hear the beacons there.

And they found a new evil: Fishermen were putting high powered beacons at
the ends of the multi-mile fish nets. They would set one end adrift with a
beacon and motor away, spooling out the net. After spooling out miles of net
they would take a bearing on the beacon and scoop up all the fish on the way
back.

The beacons were strong and the signals carried far. Some had GPS capability
and sent packets with their lat/lon so bearings were no longer required.

This ticked off the listeners and some of them started a crusade to get the
FCC to close them down. One guy made it his life's goal.

I hear a few out and about now but I think that better technologies have
taken over like intelligent radar reflectors ("Net tags").

Mike
wm1ke