AmateurRadio.com

All month long, during January 2015, a group of volunteers using the special event callsign, “K3Y” with a slant-region number (i.e., “K3Y/3” or “K3Y/0”), were on the amateur radio HF bands (and some, on six meters).  I was one of these volunteers, operating nearly every day of the month for at least one hour, but some times a few hours per day.

“K3Y,” the Straight Key Century Club’s annual January celebration, commemorates the club’s founding in 2006 following the American Radio Relay League’s Straight Key Night. A small group of participants wanted to extend the fun of SKN throughout the year. The SKCC is the result.

For the first three years, the club’s founders used K1Y, K2A, and K3Y as the celebration’s special-event calls. But someone cleverly noticed that a 3 is nothing more than a backwards, curvaceous E. This “KEY” event has operated under the K3Y call ever since.

The on-air party is open to members and non-members alike. It runs from 0000 UTC Jan. 2 through 2359 UTC Jan. 31. It’s a great time to introduce others to the joys of hand-crafted Morse code using straight keys, bugs, and side swipers.

In this video, you can see this operation at my ham radio shack, as I am the control operator of the special event station, “K3Y/0”, during one of the many shifts. “K3Y” is the special event callsign of the Straight Key Century Club (SKCC). The special event operates each January.

In the following video, you can see some of the QSL cards associated with this year’s operation, and then some other QSL cards in my collection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOsNjT7OCyc

+ The SKCC website is at http://skccgroup.com

+ The “K3Y” special event page is http://www.skccgroup.com/k3y/index.php

+ My page is at http://NW7US.us

+ My Morse code page is http://cw.hfradio.org

How about that: It's the first episode of Linux in the Ham Shack for 2015! We hope everyone is having a great new year so far. In this episode, we talk with David Rowe, VK5DGR, of Adelaide, South Australia. David is an audio engineer, Ph.D. scholar, inventor of Codec2 and co-author of FreeDV, among his many accolades. We talk to David about his projects, Linux, amateur radio, life in Australia, LinuxConf AU, the new SM1000 FreeDV device, the amount of energy it takes to make a Krispy Kreme donut, home built electric cars, and much more. Until next time...

73 de The LHS Guys

Special event, “K3Y,” the Straight Key Century Club’s annual January celebration, commemorates the Straight Key Century Club’s founding in 2006 following the American Radio Relay League’s “Straight Key Night” (SKN). A small group of participants wanted to extend the fun of SKN throughout the year. The Straight Key Century Club (SKCC) is the result.

For the first three years, the club’s founders used the special event callsigns of K1Y, K2A, and K3Y as the celebration’s special-event calls. But, someone cleverly noticed that a ‘3’ is nothing more than a backwards, curvaceous ‘E’. This “KEY” event has operated under the special event callsign of ‘K3Y’, ever since.

The on-air party is open to members and non-members alike. It runs from 0000 UTC Jan. 2 through 2359 UTC Jan. 31. It’s a great time to introduce others to the joys of hand-crafted Morse code using straight keys, bugs, and side swipers.

In this video, you can “sit in” with NW7US, the control operator of the regional activation of special event station, “K3Y/0”, during one of the many shifts during January (2015).

+ The SKCC website is at http://skccgroup.com

+ The K3Y special event page is http://www.skccgroup.com/k3y/index.php

+ The NW7US website is at http://NW7US.us

+ Some more CW/Morse code resources can be found at http://cw.hfradio.org

Look at this huge sunspot, the largest yet of Sunspot Cycle 24! It is about the same diameter as Jupiter! Notice how tiny Earth is, in comparison. Sunspots are regions on the Sun’s photosphere, formed by the “convection” of solar plasma deep inside the Sun, causing the twisting and shifting of magnetic fields. They look like spots on the photosphere because they are cooler than their surrounding solar material, giving them their dark, blemish-like appearance.

Close-up view of NOAA Active sunspot Region AR 12192 (short: 2192)

The sunspot is the largest since November 1990, and is larger than a monster sunspot that spawned a series of major solar flares over Halloween in 2003. AR 2192 was one of the biggest observed sunspots of all time, ranking 33rd largest of 32,908 active regions since 1874, according to NASA scientists C. Alex Young and Dean Pesnell.

Interestingly, this sunspot never released any major coronal mass ejection (CME), because the magnetic fields were too strong to let any significant plasma escape! However, this sunspot group unleashed a fair number of moderate to strong x-ray flares (see one of them in this video at < http://g.nw7us.us/1s7L0vF >). All told, AR 2192 popped off 26 M-class flares, and six X-class flares! Of course, during the last sunspot cycle, Cycle 23, there were many active sunspot regions unleashing flare after flare within hours of each other. That’s typical during the active phase of most sunspot cycles. This cycle, however, is one of the weakest on record, so this large sunspot with its many flares is exciting.

A Close-up of AR 2192

Each sunspot region gets a consecutive number assigned to it by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This sunspot region is NOAA AR (active region) Nr. 12192 (we often drop the first digit when speaking of a sunspot, so in this case, this region was often referred to as AR 2192).

One of the many x-ray flares originating from Active sunspot Region AR 2192 – this one seen in Extreme Ultraviolet at 131 Angstroms.

This sunspot region increased the ionization of the ionosphere, creating excellent conditions on all of the high frequency spectrum (shortwave, or HF). Even ten meters was alive with world-wide propagation. And, the best news is that this provided an exciting playing field for the CQ WW SSB contest in late October, 2014.

This sunspot region has now rotated away, but may return on about 24 days.

Credit: NASA/SDO/HMI

Check out: http://SunSpotWatch.com

Get the space weather and radio propagation self-study course: http://NW7US.us/swc

Just before the 4th of July, several sunspot regions rotated into view. Today, they are significant players in elevating the solar output of Extreme Ultraviolet energy — the energy helpful in ionizing the F-region of our Earth’s ionosphere. That, in turn, means better propagation conditions, even on higher shortwave frequencies.

As seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Sun is sporting quite a few sunspots, today. These are helping elevate the 10.7-cm flux, which is a proxy for solar output that strengthens the ionospheric propagation of higher frequencies in the shortwave spectrum. Expect good conditions on HF, this weekend.

73 and best DX!

Why would an amateur radio operator be interested in space weather?  Is it worth the time and resources to forecast propagation, in the daily operation of a typical ham radio station?

Gary, host of the popular ‘Ham Radio Now’ video podcast, talks with Tomas Hood (NW7US), propagation and space weather columnist for CQ Amateur Radio Magazine (and in the late ‘Popular Communications Magazine’ as well as ‘CQ VHF Quarterly Magazine’) and The Spectrum Monitor Magazine. Gary discusses with Tomas how scientists forecast space weather, and how the average ham radio operator can also make predictions, and what propagation forecasting can bring to the daily operations of an amateur radio enthusiast.

Watch on YouTube: ‘Ham Radio Now’ Episode 156: Propagation…

Tomas, NW7US, talks about radio propagation on shortwave (HF) as well as space weather.

As the propagation columnist for several amateur radio magazines, I hear from a diverse group of interested people that find space weather and the propagation of radio waves fascinating. I admit: I am a space weather and radio propagation nut, and it is always good to correspond or meet with other interested folks. This is an aspect of our hobby that never grows old, as there is so much that we don’t yet know–we communicators are in a perfect space to make discovery and to make improvements to our understanding of this science.  Over the years, I’ve heard a lot from readers of my columns, expressing their fascination with the science of radio and solar phenomenon.

Are you interested in learning about the Sun and the Sun-Earth connection (space weather), including topics of sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and so on?  Do you want to delve deeper into topics including the ionosphere, the magnetosphere, and how radio waves propagate from transmitter to receiver?

The critical frequency (foF2) for mornings during June 2014.

You might consider a time-proven “course”–material that is very comprehensive–that you can self-study, to become well-versed in this information. The course (one that has been used in professional disciplines) is offered either stand-alone, or bundled with the ray-tracing PropLab PRO software. 

Some may say, “But, I like the magic of just getting on the air and trying my luck! If I learn all this stuff, then it becomes science, and not a hobby.” It is true that there’s a joy at being dazzled with the magic of radio; buy a super cool transceiver, and a factory-made antenna with coax already fitted with connectors, adding the necessary accessories to make it come alive, then begin exploring the shortwave frequencies. Magical, indeed! But, there are many in the hobby that wish to learn how all of that works. Some even begin learning how to build antennas, radio kits, and discover the joy of the “science” of radio. A few eventually take the step with gained “scientific” knowledge of electronics, and they design and build equipment for their hobby. The course is part of that mix: learning how the Sun affects getting a radio signal from point A to point B, and how to leverage their time and efforts, is a joy, indeed.

Interested?  Here’s the web page: http://hfradio.org/swp_course/

PropLab PRO creates ray-traced radio wave analysis

If any disclosure is necessary, here you go: The proceeds from a purchase of this course go to the funds I use to keep cw.HFRadio.org, swl.HFRadio.org, and other resources at HFRadio.org, plus http://SunSpotWatch.com up and running. There are monthly fees, yearly fees, and software licensing to cover, as well as the purchase of hardware from time to time. These operating and maintenance funds are mostly covered by me, Tomas, NW7US, out of my personal funds. Any donations and sales helps out. Haters and Hecklers can send their comments to the bit bucket.

73 de NW7US