Beacon Watcher is a simple application that visually indicates the active beacon on any given band 20-10m. The beacon system, managed by the Northern California DX Foundation, is a coordinated set of transmitters that send an identifier (call sign) and series of tones at regular intervals. They all take turns and transmit precisely at their appointed times. Beacon Watcher tells you when a particular beacon is transmitting. If you can hear it, chances are you could hear other signals coming from that part of the world, too. This is a great resource for people doing DX!
The program itself is quite simple and was little more than an enjoyable evening’s hack with RealBasic. It is also a colorful little thing to have sitting in the corner of your screen.
You can obtain Beacon Watcher by joining the Cab-Converter group on Yahoo! and fetching it from the Files section.