"America's Aurora Beacon" Six Meters
The beacon components, left to right, include an Astron SS-30M switching power supply, a homebrew six meter RF exciter, TE Systems 0510G power amplifier, and a Vectronics PM-30 wattmeter. The little black box on top of the exciter just to the right of the cooling fan is a TIC 3 surface mount CW keyer operating in beacon mode. The small aluminum box behind the wattmeter is an ICE six meter low pass filter. The little rectangular gray box hanging vertically on the wall to the right of the wattmeter is a directional coupler used to sample RF for spectral analysis, and to feed the frequency counter.
The site is powered with a 250 Kilowatt standby electrical generator that will restore power to the beacon within seconds upon loss of hard power.
The equipment is located against the rear wall of the WDSE-TV channel 8 transmitter room that also houses two 50 Kilowatt RCA broadcast transmitters and associated equipment.