Sunday - August 24, 2014
It's been some kind of August this year. We learned this morning on wake up there was a 6.1 earthquake in Napa Valley. Lots of damage and people hurt. Only a couple of weeks ago our friends in Hawaii were slammed twice with two back-to-back hurricanes narrowly downgraded to tropical storms. Can't help but wonder what will happen next. Don't things like this come in threes? For the sake of August, let's hope not.
Site Updates: Work on the site now includes another photo from one of the web sites I work on, Great Big Photos dot com - these guys sell awesome panoramic photos printed on canvas that will knock your socks off, seriously, reminding you of places you have been. Scenic imagery captured in ways that only the pros and an inspired eye can deliver - for prices in the low hundreds, not the thousands -- great for vacation memories (You know the tip: dont buy it when you are on vacation, buy it when you get home and pay a whole lot less).
Okay, back on topic ---- I've added to the site some very cool informational widgets for band conditions, solar indexes, the terrestrial flight of the International Space Station and a few assorted links for appetizers. And thank you WB7DBJ, Gene, for the nice words regarding the site and glad you are finding the information useful. If you can, have the guys add to their listing some of their station info like antennas, amps, radio, etc.
Contributions: I'm looking for someone who is interested in helping with manning an email box that would receive contributions from some of the listed guys who want to send in a few lines now and then regarding signal reports or happenings during the recent Net that might be of interest to others (not stuff for sale) - two-liners to be posted later on an edited Contributions page.
Propagation Education Posting: I received a request in the past 5 days to start a topic page where hams can have their questions posted, specifically focused just on Propagation, and then have others send in the answers. Any ideas what we could do with this? It would be an outside the forum arena format. Forums require continual monitoring and the time spent doing that would be better used to prepare slots for each of the questions and comb through the answers.
As always, to contact me you can send an email to aloha2ohana@zebrahamradio.com
Sunday - August 3, 2014
Perfect O-Net yesterday. John always does such a great job. Signals were okay, but a little wisp of trepidation hung in the air because of the solar flare about to brush our planet and grace our airwaves with nature's brand of animal magnetism. There is a picture of the long dark filament on the Sun that was the sinister culprit - see it below. Who knows, it might persist today, or not. You never know how those ripple affects can linger on. The actual suspended filament was described as, "Stretching more than 100,000 km from end to end, and filled with dense plasma, the sinuous filament is held aloft by solar magnetic fields." As so it goes, when fields attract - boom!
Had a great conversation with George yesterday, W9EVT. He is an amazing ham with a lot of stories and fun to chat with. Glad to have made the connection and looking forward to hearing from him from time to time.
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