RBN: Pros and Cons?

The Reverse Beacon Network is known to many CW operators and serves some useful purposes for those that want to make use of it, but like all technology and the Internet, it is just an option.

RBN can be useful for checking your signal and comparing different antennae by running several tests and watching the results from various directions and the signal reports at the same stations.

RBN can also be used to create alerts if you want to know when a certain station, or club members, or any group of callsigns, is on air, and where and when.

However, I believe RBN also has its drawbacks and its data is often misinterpreted or over-rated.

For example, RBN is often used to determine whether a certain callsign is an active CW operator or not: but this is a false positive: not only do we know of at least one OP at or near the top of the table who never sleeps since it shows he’s active 23.9 hrs per day (and thus uses automation), but also many of those who are in the top 100 and beyond are only there because they call CQ a lot.

In fact, some of them, known to me, only ever call CQ. There are of course “callers” and “listeners” and those in between and we need them all! Some derive fun from seeing their rank on RBN and trying to get it higher, as a rewarding activity.

There are also those who don’t even seek a reply: all that matters is calling CQ and increasing rank on RBN, and not in any way inviting a reply. Calls have been heard CQ CQ CQ DX DE CALLSIGN (X3-4) CQ CQ DX and then just stops there for a few seconds then starts again.

Ending a CQ with silence, or worse with a CQ CQ DX and then silence, is not an invitation to transmit for any caller, although calling DX on 40m at midday with a low dipole when DX is impossible for hours on end, explains the high rank of ca. 100 for the particular operator.

Of course, there is no harm in this, and as stated many times before, the World’s Greatest Hobby caters for all kinds of interests and operating methods and modes, and purely having a conversation with RBN is evidently one of many such pursuits which is harmless and enjoyable for some.

For such cases, ending a CQ with <AR> or indeed silence is justified, since it is not an invitation to transmit and going to receive, but simply the end of a general call. VVV as in Testing, Testing, Testing also works for RBN, and increasingly other non-CQ events.

In fact, many may not be aware that you have to take RBN readings with caution: there are also false positives whereby the RBN logs the other station in the QSO with you as your callsign and thus gives you their SNR report. This is obvious when the RBN is on the other side of the world and your simple set up results in a 36 dB SNR while you are only 449 for the DX station.

The point here is only to point out that RBN is NOT an accurate measure of your manhood, or of your CW ability or of your activity levels on CW. If you only or mainly reply to callers without calling CQ yourself, you are very rarely going to be “spotted” by RBN and your rank may be 50,000 even if you have several such long QSO daily.

This has to be said as there are many heard saying that so and so is an active CW operator, because of their rank on RBN and this is true, although the activity itself might be only calling CQ. On the other hand, if you only give your callsign once at the start and every 15 minutes in a 6 hour long QSK “rag chew” you may not even be spotted once, whereas the aforementioned fellow will be spotted 100 times, depending on the band and his location.

So this only to explain the point that RBN is not a true measure of CW activity.

This brings us to the next problem with accepting RBN data uncritically as a measure of CW activity: in most of the world, there simply is no RBN coverage. Africa and South America have no RBN receivers at all on many of the bands, since the DX Pedos that visit, bag 100,000 QSO and dollars then leave without paying any taxes, leave no equipment behind, no new local hams and no RBN not even a receiver.

So unless you are wanting to check your signal into Europe or North America, RBN is not going to be reliable. Even in Asia, there are several bands where there are next to no RBN receivers at all.

Thus it should also be clear by now that if you are located in Africa, Asia or South America, you could be the most active CQ caller in the world and be ranked below 500. RBN is simply over-rated: if it wants to be improved in its coverage, it might aim at getting sponsors for the DX Pedos to be leaving educational and amateur radio gear leading to licenses and RBN stations behind them.

However, all is not lost if you are outside Europe and North America and want to check your antenna you might opt to tune in to one of the many Web SDR (Software Defined Radio) receivers around the world, a search of the web will show there are many and coverage is actually better than the current Reverse Beacon Network.

No matter where you are in the world, at least on 10, 12, 15, 17 and 20m there are also the 18 IBP beacons spaced in all corners of planet Earth, transmitting non-stop (except for breakdowns and during storms in some locations) for several decades on 28200, 24930, 21150, 18110 and 14100kHz.

For those that are older and remember, you’ll recognize why these particular frequencies: simply because those were the original band edge between CW-ONLY and CW-SSB bands. Later, when RTTY became a thing, it was the band edge between RTTY and SSB. So, you’d think that ever since the Commodore 64 and RTTY that the RTTY Ops would know about the beacons right?

Right. Of course they do. They hear them all the time, everyone near those frequencies does. Only they choose not to during RTTY contests and wipe these beacons out for around half the weekends in the year. Even the WAE RTTY Con Test Manager himself chooses to operate within the IBP guard band, but that’s a subject for a different post regarding the “Con Test Case”!

One can use the IBP beacons also to check the ANT although it is a more time consuming and less accurate method, by taking the averages from each, and may also only account for receive, since your ANT might receive well but be a dummy load on transmit.

RBN is also often misused as a tool for gauging the band use of CW compared to digital modes. This again is a big subject which may be addressed in another post, but in short, digital modes and digital logging and decoding all go hand in hand, while CW for a variety of reasons is less digitally logged, less digitally decoded and thus digital non-human methods cannot be used to evaluate band occupancy of CW when compared to digital modes.

This ruse is regularly and widely used by those who keep trying to justify un-needed expansion of FT8 into the CW bands! Fortunately many are now wise to this false data method to minimize CW band occupancy, but unfortunately we have to keep fighting the same battles year after year to defend attempts to take away CW real estate, while we always need CW ops to be more pro active both on air and subscribed to mailing lists such as these so we can have more results like these.

Do you like to use computing and internet or do you prefer to keep them completely out of the radio shack? Do you make use of RBN? In which ways does RBN enhance your experience or assist your operating practices? Comment below, we’d love to hear your experiences!