The recent initiative by the beacon folks at the NCDXF to spur competition among RBN nodes to copy all of the NCDXF beacons has prompted me to review our documentation of how to spot these beacons. This checklist should help you set up your node to receive these beacons. You must do each listed step, or it will not work.
1. Make sure your Skimmer or Skimmer Server is set up to cover the beacon frequencies. See this earlier blog post for the details. Remember, you need to set both the frequency coverage and the CW decoding segments in order for Skimmer/Skimmer Server to do their thing.
2. Create a watch.lst file containing the calls of all 18 beacons. Details here. Store it in the correct place.
3. Set your Skimmer or Skimmer Server (on the Telnet tab) so that it does not send only CQ spots.
Once you have done these things, you're ready to spot the NCDXF beacons. The Aggregator knows the callsigns, and will automatically append the NCDXF tag before sending the spot on to the RBN "mothership."
