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NCDXF/IARU beacons on 28200 kHz: if you hear them, 10 m is open
The eighteen worldwide beacons on 28200 kHz, the last band of the chain, forty seconds behind their 20 m slot. 10 m is closed more often than open, so a callsign here is news, and all four dashes mean a very good day.
What you hear
The chain described in the main article: a callsign in Morse and four one-second dashes at 100, 10, 1 and 0.1 watts, a new beacon every ten seconds. 28200 kHz is the last stop of every beacon's round, forty seconds after its slot on 14100, so 4U1UN is heard here at forty seconds past the top of every third minute.
Who transmits and why
The Northern California DX Foundation and the IARU. 28200 kHz sits inside the 10 m beacon segment, between 28.2 and 28.3 MHz, where dozens of other amateur beacons live; the catalogue has that segment as 10 m beacons 28.2 to 28.3. The NCDXF chain is the one with GPS timing and the power steps, which makes it the best calibrated of them.
When and where to listen
10 m depends on the sun more than any other shortwave band. Near a solar maximum it opens in daylight almost daily, from Europe to Africa and South America around midday and to North America in the afternoon; at a solar minimum it can stay shut for months, apart from summer sporadic E openings to beacons a thousand or two kilometres away. If a distant callsign comes through on 28200 with two or more dashes, the band is worth exploring at once.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Beacons → NCDXF beacons 10 m. The program picks a public receiver that covers 28200 kHz, tunes it in CW and shows the waterfall; no receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.