What he should do for a mechanical keyer is use some logic to drive a pair of solenoids that act on the dit and dah paddles plugged into a keyer. That way the keyer will even out the variation in the mechanical keying.
Or possibly his idea was to see how can he can get the most amount of discussion/response to his beacon and he’s achieving that by making its keying well suboptimal. QLF? bk
Thanks Gavin
Oh, good - that means its just not my morse then!! TKS!
Perhaps a rather naive question, but why on earth would I, or someone else want to put out a beacon?
David
Vanity.
Hearing nothing on the South Coast ??
DAVID
G0FVH
From the comments regarding its keying and value to the ham community that is probably no loss TBH. 
And a waste of space here - you guys are obsessing about one signal on one narrow band frequency, why?
Typical Andy. No answer, just a low level snarky comment. And as Moderator I have a duty to NOT mute any thread, just as you have a duty to observe the AUP.
Before making my comment I tuned 7030 - 7040. It wasn’t exactly a hive of activity, with less than a dozen signals and plenty of empty space - and no sign of the offending signal, just a strong CQ on 7036. So why is this signal so important and generating so much criticism? The guy is doing no harm with his little experiment that I can see.
plonk
I have information that there is some radio history behind this beacons operation…
At present I hear weak CW around RST 329 on 7035 KHZ in NE England. Too weak to get the whole message unless I listen for several minutes, which I am not prepared to do so need to look another time when the signal is stronger. Its going at a decent lick - I reckon about 23-25 WPM. Either there is a long gap between it broadcasting its message or there is pronounced QSB. Its so weak its hard to tell. Most beacons operate almost continuously with a short time gap between the automatic message but this one doesn’t seem to. Then a QSO started up on 7035 so I went back to checking for DX on 160m FT8…
73 Phil
Phil
I’ve only heard the signal in the mornings. Whatever `i’m listening to is quite slow 10 -14 wpm.
From M1EDF’s QRZ.com page:
…Beacon Photos and information temporarily removed …
It was all there yesterday! Now, I know that correlation does not imply causation but… 
Here’s the video.
David
Thanks David 599. I read the beacon text sent as M1EDF QM. The owner of the beacon, Geoffrey M1EDF of Tamworth, has been in touch, and I am corresponding with him. If I get any more useful information about it I will publish it on the reflector… I see you are using one of the old Ten Tecs. I listened to a TenTec Corsair owned by a friend in the mid 1980s, and I was impressed with the low noise receiver on CW at the time. I later purchased a new TenTec Paragon transceiver from Harry Leeming G3LLL in Blackburn, around 1989-1990 but did not keep it long. It proved unreliable, so I moved back to Yaesu.
73 Phil
A good question. Richard’s answer has some validity in this case. The main reason is either to disseminate information such as DK0WCY (the aurora beacon) or to indicate propagation is viable.
There are many fewer beacons on the LF bands mainly because there is plenty of broadcast or commercial/military signals that can be used. A 40m beacon is of limited use if it’s not available 24/7. We have the 41m broadcast band at the top of 40m with lots of reliable well engineered stations running and this makes a beacon running A1A that’s not frequency/time locked of limited value.
There’s often scope for personal/small beacons on 10m/6m etc. where propagation can be very fleeting. But again they need to be 24/7 and most useful is having some webpage describing the beacon (power, antenna, modulation) and contact details for the keeper. Coordinating your beacon so it doesn’t QRM other beacons can be difficult.
The VHF and up bands have plenty of beacon complexes such as the excellent GB3CSB (QRV 23, 13, 9 and 3cms) This has GPS locked frequency control, runs known powers to antennas pointing in known directions and the modulation is JT4G which allows identification to very low signal levels as well as A1A. It’s been very well engineered so its signals are accurate and clean and so it is reliable.
You can lookup the International Beacon Project for info on HF synchronised beacons. Or check out UK Amateur Radio & Microwave Beacons as this links to plenty of beacon web sites. Of course the fact we are all nearly always online means things like WSPR and RBN can use “any old Joe’s” transmissions to do the same as propagation beacons and possibly render many of the beacons of much less value. However, in my view, there is something I really like about tuning around the beacon bands on 10m / 6m and winkling out the beacons and possibly hearing something DXy. Of course there’ll be nobody on the bands!
This beacon falls into the vanity class, it’s more a curiosity than a useful signal IMHO. It demonstrates that it’s not so easy to make a mechanical keyer that is viable.
When the climber George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Everest, he replied “Because it’s there.” That’s not really either an informative or even a sensible answer, but it illustrates the point that people do not have to have sensible or rational reasons to do things. That may well be so in this case - I don’t know why he is doing it, and I don’t need to know why he is doing it. He is doing it for his own reasons. All I need to know is (a) is it illegal? and (b) is he causing any harm to anybody else? As far as I can see the answers are “no” and “no”, so I shrug my shoulders and move on.
Not sure how you know this? If he lived in my town I would be less than amused. It’s also a matter of scale. What if we all took this attitude? It’s akin to those 80m nets that tell people to get off “their” frequency: except it’s 24/7 interference. If it was a very low power beacon (say < 100mW) sending proper CW carrying some useful information I could perhaps see some point but it’s so ill-conceived that it’s taken the combined might of the SOTA Hive Brain to even figure out what it is.
Interference to whom? Logically if he is occupying a single narrow CW frequency 24/7 then anybody else coming on and trying to use the frequency will be QRMing him! I could understand the complaints if the signal was technically deficient in some way, drifting, causing key clicks etc, but the complaints seem to be aimed just at the fact that he is or was there. Frankly it looks to me like a form of NIMBYism, its unusual so let’s ban it sort of thing. What next? “Everything not forbidden is compulsory” is fine in quantum mechanics but nowhere else.
and you don’t think a callsign sent as Id so badly that it’s unreadable is a problem? Also that he is sending a call+suffix without the separator character(/) making it an invalid callsign.
If its a problem, it isn’t your problem.
