W4HM "Free" Daily MF/HF/6M Radio Wave Propagation Forecast

W4HM has decided to make his W4HM Daily MF/HF/6M Radio Wave Propagation Forecast free of charge to all of his fellow amateur radio operators and SWL's around the world.
It can be found at http://www.solarcycle24.org and http://www.wcflunatall.com/propagation.htm .

Thomas F. Giella, W4HM
Lakeland, FL, USA w4hm@tampabay.rr.com
W4HM Daily MF/HF/6M Radio Wave Propagation Forecast Subscription Service: http://www.solarcycle24.org

W4HM Solar Space & Geomagnetic Weather Data Dashboard: http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o2.htm

W4HM Solar Cycle 24 Forecast Discussion & Archive:
http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o4.htm

W4HM 160 Meter Radio Propagation Theory Notes: 
 http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o5.htm

W4HM Solar Space Weather & Geomagnetic Raw Forecast Data Links: http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o6.htm

Solar Cycle 24 Dot Org on Facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Solar...39198369462931

Marshall Hamfest and Radio Swap

 The 53rd Annual Marshall Hamfest and Radio Swap meet will be held on Saturday, March 16, 2013 at the Marshall Activity Center (MAC), 15325 W. Michigan Avenue in Marshall, Michigan. The doors will open at 8:00AM and the event will run until 12:00PM. Admission is $5.00 and parking is free. Table-space is available for vendors or those who have items they wish to sell, priced at $10.00 per 8’. Amateur radio license testing will begin at 10:00AM. All are welcome to join us! For registration materials and additional information, please visit our website www.w8df.com, contact Dave “Doc” Ashbolt K8OLY or Mike Schmieder KD8NJA at (269) 223-7141 or email us at crossroadshamfest@gmail.com.


More Info; Click Here 
http://www.w8df.com/index.php?content=hamfest

 

Sunday Voice Net – Topic: TAPRN Winlink BBS

Hello TAPRN, Hope everyone had a great week.  We will be having our weekly Voice Net this Sunday, 3/10/13, at 9pm EST, God willing.  As always, we’ll do our best to be at 3.818, but history is proving 3.819 or higher due to QRM is needed. For this week’s topic, W0ECM has offered to discuss the TAPRN
More info; Click Here
 

APOCALYPSE 101 - EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

APOCALYPSE 101:  If the flood waters rise, if the virus spreads, if the bombs go off -- the guys who run Forge Survival Supply are ready. Meet four former Marines who believe that they have what it takes to survive almost any doomsday scenario. Joel, Mark, Mike and Jimmy own Forge Survival Supply; their mission is to use what they have on hand to teach and test their clients' survival skills.  Set your DVR!!!!

MOUSER ELECTRONICS

Mouser Electronics, a name well known in the ham radio do it
yourself movement, has  announced the signing of a new
international distribution agreement with Coilcraft, a
leading magnetic component manufacturer, across the regions
of Europe, Asia, Mexico and South America.  Through this
partnership, announced at Embedded World in Germany, Mouser
is now stocking a wide range of Coilcraft's magnetic and
inductive products for immediate shipment.

Coilcraft provides magnetic components including high-
performance RF chip inductors, power magnetics and filters
in a variety of packages and a wide range of values.
Designer's kits are offered to help engineers learn the
capabilities of these high-performance inductors.

According to Mouser President and CEO Glenn Smith, this
agreement with Coilcraft helps further his company's
commitment to providing the newest products and technologies
for design engineers from industry-leading suppliers.  Smith
adds that Mouser and Coilcraft are looking forward to a long-
standing and successful partnership together.

World Amateur Radio Day

World Amateur Radio Day is April 18th and according to the
International Amateur Radio Union that sponsors the event
the theme this year is Amateur Radio:  Entering Its Second
Century of Disaster Communications.

According to the IARU announcement, the theme for 2013 of
Amateur Radio:  Entering Its Second Century of Disaster
Communications is an excellent opportunity for amateur radio
emergency communications groups to take advantage of the
event to highlight the role amateur radio plays in disaster
response.

Among the suggestions are for IARU member societies to
arrange ham radio demonstrations in public places such as
parks or shopping areas.  The IARU says that such
demonstrations in public areas usually generate inquiries
and questions from the public about amateur radio.  It adds
that this makes it a great opportunity to attract new people
to become members of the ham radio community.

The IARU notes that in 2013, April 18th is a weekday but
that should not keep public activity from taking place
either on the weekend before or after that date.  Also, if
you plan on holding a public demonstration, the IARU says
not to forget to include some young people to show all ages
are a part of this growing world wide public service
oriented hobby.

More information on World Amateur Radio Day is on the web at
www.iaru.org. 

SARL NATIONAL CONVENTION APRIL 26 - 28

The 2013 South African Radio League's National Convention
and Annual General meeting will be held April 26th to the
28th at the Sulla Via Venue not far from Johannesburg.  This
years gathering will be hosted by the West Rand Amateur
Radio Club with Kenny Neville from West Rand Astronomy Club
as the featured guest speaker.  If conditions are clear
Neville's talk may be followed by a sky gazing party.  More
information, further program details and reservation forms
should be on-line right now at will be available on
www.sarl.org.za.  The planners hope to see many ham radio
operators there.

APRS EXPERIMENT

APRS works to extend communications range underground.
So says the modes developer Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, who
reports on an experiment that took place on March 2nd .  One
where he and several other hams tested the use of APRS as a
means to extend radio communications underground in Mammoth
Cave, Kentucky.

According to Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, typically, VHF and UHF
radio in underground caves are limited to only a few hundred
feet and strictly line-of-sight making their routine use of
little value.  But with APRS radios acting as packet
digipeaters, these few hundreds of feet can be extended by
an order of magnitude.

Bruninga says that in the test a total of 14 APRS equipped
radios were used in the cave to establish a network almost a
mile long providing real-time position and text message
communications along the route.  Cavers carried a map of the
cave marked with a Latitude and Longitude grid so they could
manually enter their position into their handheld APRS-
equipped transceivers.   Texting via APRS provided
communications end to end.

Among the interesting findings were that UHF worked about
13% better than VHF withan average link distance of about
450 feet even in the large subway sized passages of Mammoth
Cave.  Also power did not seem to matter much. The Kenwood
TH-D72 walkie-talkie performed as well as several portable
10 watt mobile radios housed in boxes.

Another advantage of using UHF for this APRS network was
that individual links in other caves can just as easily be
pre-tested by unlicensed cave explorers using inexpensive
FRS radios.  This way, all cavers can plan and individually
test the topology of an APRS network before actually
gathering the required APRS equipment and setting up the
actual expedition.
 

Peak of Cycle 24

Something unexpected appears to be happening on the sun.
2013 is supposed to be the year of Solar Max also known as
the peak of Cycle 24.  Yet 2013 has arrived and solar
activity is relatively low.  Sunspot numbers are well below
their values in 2011, and strong solar flares have been
infrequent for many months.  The quiet has led some
observers to wonder if forecasters missed the mark.

Dean Pesnell is a Solar physicist at the Goddard Space
Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.  He suggests that this
is the solar maximum, but it looks different from what we
expected because it will be double peaked.

Conventional wisdom holds that solar activity swings back
and forth like a simple pendulum.  At one end of the cycle,
there is a quiet time with few sunspots and flares.  At the
other end, the Solar Max brings high sunspot numbers and
solar storms with a regular rhythm that repeats every 11
years.

Reality, however, is more complicated.  Astronomers have
been counting sunspots for centuries, and they have seen
that the solar cycle is not perfectly regular.  For one
thing, the back-and-forth swing in sunspot counts can take
anywhere from 10 to 13 years to complete.  Also, the
amplitude of the cycle varies.  Some solar maxima are very
weak while others can be very strong.

And as researcher Pesnell notes, there is yet another
complication.  He says that the last two solar maxima,
around 1989 and 2001, had not one but two peaks.  He says
that solar activity went up, dipped, and then resumed while
performing a mini-cycle within the Solar Max that lasted
about two years.

Pesnell says that the same thing could be happening now.  He
notes that sunspot counts jumped in 2011 and dipped in 2012.
As such, he expects them to rebound again saying that
another peak will happen in 2013 and possibly last into
2014.  Lets hope he is right.

LES 1

 Phil Williams, G3YPQ, is an Amateur Radio Astronomer in
North Cornwall in the U.K..  According to reports he
accidentally picked up the signal and after cross checking
with various lists, he identified it as LES 1.

LES 1 was built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and launched in 1965. The satellite failed to reach its
intended orbit owing to a wiring error and has been drifting
out of control ever since.

Williams ran across it while monitoring near 237 MHz when he
noticed a signal with a peculiar signal drift caused by the
bird tumbling end over end every 4 seconds as the solar
panels became shadowed by the satellites engine.  Williams
said that gives the signal a particularly ghostly sound as
the voltage from the solar panels fluctuates.

The LES 1 satellite is about the size of a small car and is
not likely to re-enter the atmosphere for a long time as the
orbit is still relatively high.  It poses no threat other
than that caused by the thousands of other pieces of space
junk currently in orbit.  By now its likely that the on
board batteries have now disintegrated so its likely that
some other component failure has caused the transmitter to
start up when its in sunlight bringing the ghost satellite
back to life.