AmateurRadio.com

According to the following post, the US Air Force still trains a few individuals each year on Morse Code. Also this blog that this post is on is a cool SWL website if you are interested.

http://swling.com/blog/2015/12/morse-code-training-in-the-air-force/






Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

courtesy: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/

This month's Sky & Telescope magazine mentions an interesting study presented in a press release from the International Astronomical Union's 29th General Assembly held this past summer.



Frederic Clette (Royal Observatory of Belgium) and colleagues analyzed the past 400 years of sunspot records and found that the (previously believed) upward trend in solar activity is really a calibration error. They found instead, that solar activity has been relatively stable since the 1700s.

The IAU's summer press release goes on to say ...

" The Sunspot Number, the longest scientific experiment still ongoing, is a crucial tool used to study the solar dynamo, space weather and climate change. It has now been recalibrated and shows a consistent history of solar activity over the past few centuries. The new record has no significant long-term upward trend in solar activity since 1700, as was previously indicated. This suggests that rising global temperatures since the industrial revolution cannot be attributed to increased solar activity.

The results ... make it difficult to explain the observed changes in the climate that started in the 18th century and extended through the industrial revolution to the 20th century as being significantly influenced by natural solar trends.

The apparent upward trend of solar activity between the 18th century and the late 20th century has now been identified as a major calibration error in the Group Sunspot Number. Now that this error has been corrected, solar activity appears to have remained relatively stable since the 1700s

The newly corrected sunspot numbers now provide a homogeneous record of solar activity dating back some 400 years. Existing climate evolution models will need to be reevaluated given this entirely new picture of the long-term evolution of solar activity. This work will stimulate new studies both in solar physics (solar cycle modelling and predictions) and climatology, and can be used to unlock tens of millennia of solar records encoded in cosmogenic nuclides found in ice cores and tree rings. This could reveal more clearly the role the Sun plays in climate change over much longer timescales. "

courtesy: World Data Center - SILSO

The graph above shows the Group Sunspot Numbers (GSN) measured over the past 400 years following the new calibration. The Maunder Minimum, between 1645 and 1715, when sunspots were rare and winters harsh, is clearly evident.

I found this graph particularly interesting with regards to long-term affects on propagation as it illustrates the upcoming predicted Gleissberg Cycle, the 'cycle within the Cycle' ... a period of several weak 11-year cycles in a row and lasting from 80-90 years ... great news for low-frequency fans but not so good for 6m diehards. 

Maybe we'll get one more humdinger before it arrives!



Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

The big shack renovation meant I had to put all my stuff back into boxes. No problem spending some time without my rigs and tools, but I didn’t want to spend a couple of months without any form of radio. So I left out the RTL-SDR dongle and a mobile whip to see if I could get some more out of it than digital TV. I have had the dongle for a while now, but I was never impressed by it. Lots of white noise and very few signals to be seen on the waterfall. I even boxed it up nicely to avoid EMI.

The first step was to see if the dongle still worked by scanning the DVB-T bands. After installing the necessary RTL-SDR packages I fired up VLC to see if it would decode signals. There are packages like MythTV and MeTV that can let you watch DVB-T, but I don’t like cluttering up my system especially since VLC is such a versatile piece of software. For it to work you need to open an console though, but the internet is awash with good tutorials to help you get it done.

Step 1: install dvb-apps with sudo apt-get install dvb-apps
Step 2: use the scan application that comes with dvb-apps: scan /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/tw-All > channels.conf
Step 3: open the channels.conf file with VLC
Step 4: choose your favourite channel and enjoy

Most of the time Linux provides an alternative and in this case it’s w_scan: w_scan -X -c TW

substitute your own country code in place of TW; a list can be retrieved by issuing the command w_scan -c ?

Before I knew it I was watching the WBSC Premier 12 baseball games and found out Taiwan’s public broadcaster is airing Person of Interest. Usually I find that watching tele is just a big waste of time, but I do also find that it is the only time I am not physically active and I do need to rest more. My wife likes PoI too, so now we have a date every Monday through Wednesday at 10.

The FM band was another check to see if the RTL-SDR dongle works as advertised. On Windows the prevalent SDR software is SDR#. On Linux this is GQRX, which is based on GNU Radio, a very powerful but complex piece of software. Before you can start GQRX you need to deactivate the dvb_usb_rtl28xxu driver as this conflicts with the rtl2832 driver. Issue the following command: sudo rmmod dvb_usb_rtl28xxu. If you never watch TV then blacklist the driver in order for it to be never loaded when you insert the dongle.

I could indeed receive FM broadcasts, but as many as I could with my Sangean ATS-909, so no big win there. GQRX also has a build in AFSK demodulator and I tried to decode some APRS signals on our local frequency of 144.640 MHz. I could hear signals and see them on the waterfall, but not decode them. After trying some other antennas and even taking everything outside in the open I grew a bit frustrated and searched for some other signals to decode. Tracking aircraft using ASD-B seemed fun (G4VXE wrote about it before here on AmateurRadio.com ) so I tried to set that up. And in doing so I got a big surprise.

[to be continued]

Hans "Fong" van den Boogert, BX2ABT, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Taiwan. Contact him at [email protected].

The annual AmateurLogic Christmas Extravaganza is this Friday night at 8:00 CDT, 0200 UTC at www.live.amateurlogic.tv . You don’t want to miss it.

George Thomas, W5JDX, is co-host of AmateurLogic.TV, an original amateur radio video program hosted by George Thomas (W5JDX), Tommy Martin (N5ZNO), Peter Berrett (VK3PB), and Emile Diodene (KE5QKR). Contact him at [email protected].

Harold - KB0ROB

This past Friday night's wonderful propagation during the ARRL 160m CW Contest, pretty much went into the dumper for Saturday night's 1929 Bruce Kelley QSO Party, sponsored by the Antique Wireless Association.




In spite of the auroral-like conditions, with the K-index reaching level '5', the melodic tones from many of the old (and new) clunkers could be heard pounding out their annual 'CQ AWA' invitations.

Among my 19 contacts (8 on 40m and 11 80m), the highlight of the night was working W2ICE/1 in Maine on both 40 and 80m. In reality, this was Paul, N1BUG, operating Bruce Kelley's original 10 watt TNT, which rose to almost S9 levels on 40m, once the sun had set. The Kelley transmitter is moved to various locations each year, a new AWA tradition.

As well, Larry (NE1S), also in Maine, was worked on 40m with  his 10W TNT.



A new station for my '29 logbook was George (N3GJ), in Pennsylvania. George was managing 8 watts input to his version of a 1929 TNT.


When I first tuned-in, several years ago, to hear what these 1929 signals sounded like, two of the best sounding signals were coming from KBØROB (Harold), shown at the top, and KBØMM (Burt), both in Minnesota. I could hardly believe they were using era-appropriate rigs as their signals sounded as good as many modern rigs. Thankfully nothing has changed, as these two stations continue to hand out 'MN' using their well-built 'MOPA'-style time machines.



Scott, WA9WFA, the BK score-keeper in charge of logs, faded up briefly with his fine-looking Colpitts.



Here is a list of the '29ers worked so far, along with their rig style and DC power inputs.

       40m

       KK7UV     Hartley    10w    MT
       W2ICE/1    TNT    10w     ME
       NE1S    TNT    10w    ME
       VE7BDQ    Colpitts    8w    BC
       K7SF    Hartley    10w    OR
       K4JYS    Hartley    10w    NC
       WB2AWQ    Hartley    10w    NV
       N3GJ    TNT    8w    PA

       80m

       KBØMM    MOPA    8w    MN
       KBØROB    MOPA    9w    MN
       W7LNG    TNT    7w     OR
       K4JYS    Hartley    10w    NC
       W2ICE/1    TNT    10w    ME
       WA9WFA    Colpitts    20w     MN
       KK7UV    Hartley    10w    MT
       W9TFC    Hartley    10w    WI
       N2BE    Hartley    10w     NJ
       KIØDB    MOPA    10w    MN
       WØLGU    MOPA    10w    MN

As you can see, 'Hartley' construction takes a slight edge. Vintage 'handbooks' and magazine articles from the era, have always promoted the TNT as the best 'beginners' rig but in reality, the Hartley is much easier to build and to get working with a good-sounding signal. The TNT requires some finicky tweaking of the grid coil in order to have an equally stable-sounding note.

I'm happy to report that in spite of the very high winds (as usual), my new MOPA's tone remained virtually unmoving ... for the most part! This was its first real workout and after my first QSO on 80m, my frequency began making large jumps and suddenly sounding very unstable, along with fluctuations in power output. My initial thought was that one of the old original mica caps was starting to breakdown.

After disconnecting one lead of each capacitor (one at a time) and temporarily clipping in a modern substitute, I was no further ahead. I had originally isolated the frequency instability to the amplifier stage and there was only one thing left ... the amplifier's grid-leak resistor. It appeared to be slowly failing, by increasing resistance in jumps. The 12K resistor was now measuring ten times that value and quickly rising. A new 12K, temporarily clipped in place, cured the problem but it had cost me over an hour of operating time ... probably the best prop of the night as by the time I got back on the band, signals were weak and auroral-sounding.

Hopefully the bands will have mended themselves by next Saturday night, allowing some of the smaller eastern stations to make it back to the west coast for some memorable '29 'transcons'.
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

On Sunday, I noticed that Brad WA6MM posted that he planned to activate Dakota Hill (W0C/SR-051) for Summits On The Air (SOTA). Dakota is not a good VHF shot from my house but I was planning to be mobile out east towards Black Forest that morning, so it was worth a try. I texted Brad to let him know I’d be looking for him on 2m fm.

Heading south on Highway 83, the road was gaining elevation when Brad let me know he would soon be on the air. Dakota Hill is 10,929 feet and set back into the mountains, so I wasn’t sure if I could make the RF trip over Palmer Divide to work him. I pulled over at the crest of the hill and made a call. Brad had moved off 146.52 MHz due to some intermod interference and was on 146.55 MHz. Brad was using his trusty handheld radio running 5 watts into a half-wave antenna while I had a 50 watt mobile with a 1/4-wave antenna on the roof of the SUV. We made the contact without too much trouble…his signal was half scale on the meter. I listened to Brad work another station as I drove on, losing elevation and losing Brad’s signal on the other side of the hill. That was apparently THE SPOT to make the contact.

I put WA6MM into the log, scoring 6 SOTA chaser points for the 70 mile QSO. No, this wasn’t a rare DX station, no new record set, nothing that exceptional to report, actually. But it was a fun contact, with Brad hiking to a summit in December and me trying to find a location to work him.

This is why I like VHF on SOTA. Just another example of having fun messing around with radios.

73, Bob K0NR

The post Just Another VHF SOTA Contact appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

Here is this week’s space weather and geophysical report, issued 2015 Dec 07 0214 UTC.

Highlights of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 30 November – 06 December 2015

Solar activity was at low levels. Regions 2458 (N10, L=356, class/area Dao/160 on 24 Nov), 2462 (N09, L=216, class/area Hax/40 on 04 Dec), 2463 (S11, L=205, class/area Dao/130 on 05 Dec) and 2464 (S12, L=189, class/area Axx/10 on 05 Dec) each produced C-class flares. The largest event of the period was a C4/Sf at 1702 UTC on 04 December. No Earth-directed coronal mass ejections were observed during the period.

No proton events were observed at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was normal levels on 30 November and reached moderate levels on 01 December. High levels were observed from 02-04 December before returning to moderate levels for the remainder of the period.

Geomagnetic field activity was quiet to active with an isolated minor storm period from 0600-0900 UTC on 30 November due to effects from a positive polarity coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS). Quiet to active levels were observed on 01 December as HSS influence continued. Predominately quiet conditions were observed from 02-04 December with some unsettled periods on 02 and 04 December. Quiet to active levels returned on 05 December due to effects from a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) ahead of a second positive polarity CH HSS. Unsettled to active conditions dominated 06 December with an isolated minor storm period observed from 0900-1200 UTC.

Forecast of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 07 December – 02 January 2016

Solar activity is expected to be at very low to low levels throughout the forecast period.

No proton events are expected at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit is expected to be at normal to moderate levels for the majority of the period with high levels likely on 08-09 December, 11-15 December and 29-31 December following anticipated recurrent CH HSS events.

Geomagnetic field activity is expected to reach minor storm levels on 07 and 08 December due to continued effects from a positive polarity CH HSS. Predominately unsettled to active conditions are expected to from 09-13 December with minor storm periods possible as HSS effects persist. Mostly quiet levels are expected from 14-26 December. Quiet to active conditions are likely on 27 and 28 December due effects from a second recurrent CH HSS followed by quiet to unsettled conditions on 29 December as influence subsides. Quiet conditions are expected on 30-31 December. Unsettled to active conditions are expected on 01 January with minor storm levels likely on 02 January as a third recurrent CH HSS moves into a geoeffective position.

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