An otherwise busy Saturday allowed me a few minutes to get on the air today and I was greeted with amazing conditions.
Not many stations were on 15m but those that were, were DX and different parts of the world were copyable at the same time.
I listened to the two strongest and was surprised upon their ID’ing that it was a Spanish station (EA5DWS) and a New Zealander (ZL1BYZ) in QSO with each other, both 589 here in Houston. I’d recently worked the ZL so I called EA5DWS for a quick exchange of reports. I think we both wanted to maximize our use of these conditions while they lasted. Continue reading 'Excellent conditions on 15/17 meters today'»
With recent forays into VHF territory, I’m logging QTH’s in terms of grids rather than states, provinces or countries. Contest exchanges include grid squares and I’m left after the contest to tediously look up which states I worked.
I’m not complaining ‘cuz I see the benefit and the reason for such exchanges. In short, they add more variety to locations to be worked on bands that are often difficult to achieve much geographical diversity.
Thanks to this hobby, I can picture in my imagination the location of any state in the country – but I can’t do that with grid squares.
Bertrand Zauhar VE2ZAZ has come up with a nifty little (470KB) program named WorkedGrids to just that. In short, you import an ADIF or Cabrillo file into WorkedGrids and it displays a map of locations worked that are color-coded on a per band basis. Continue reading 'Handy program for graphical representation of grids worked'»
Last week, I worked 34 states on 6 meters during a very casual effort in the ARRL VHF Contest. Much to my surprise, no one called the next day to interview me on television – not Oprah, not Bono, not even The View - and soccer fans rudely failed to serenade me with those beautiful-sounding vuvuzelas. The very nerve.
Now I know why.
Those 34 states had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with the luck of the draw. I really knew that all along but Saturday’s (June 19) conditions on 6 meters illustrated to me once again the role that luck and nature play in amateur radio.
We like to think of radio as a technical hobby where, with an ingredient of skill, we are able to divine from the æther those minute electromagnetic fluctuations and convert them into meaningful dialog (I use the term “meaningful” lightly). Continue reading '6-meter oddities and organic towers'»
I guess it’s to be expected that in an age of sound-bites, infomercials and Oprah-addicted housewives that a once-respected agency has to resort to hype in order to be heard above the din.
NASA’s solar weather prediction reads like something from HG Wells:
“A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.” Continue reading 'A “century-class solar storm”?'»
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