Turns a Kenwood TS-480 into a helicopter beacon
We have a homemade helicopter non-directional beacon onboard the Greenpeace ship MY Esperanza, tuned with a crystal to frequency 1625.5. Unfortunately the ADF on the helicopter we got, a Bendix King KR87m, cannot tune to half kilohertzs.
However we have a Kenwood TS-480, which can transmit within the range of this ADF. So I wrote this little script to control the Kenwood via CAT commands through serial, to loop through a morse message (our ship's call sign) on CW and it works good.
python heli_beacon.py {timer in minutes}
python heli_beacon.py 30