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Hello everybody! In this episode of the Everything Ham Radio Podcast, I am stuck by myself talk to yall. I unfortunately didn’t remember that I my next scheduled update was due until 4pm the day before. So I worked all afternoon, while at work, trying to figure out what I was going to talk about. When I got off work at midnight, I ran home and did my couple honey-dos and then went straight to recording the episode.

So what is in this episode?

First off, I made a mistake! Yea, I know, nobody is suppose to make mistakes right? Well, in my last episode I did. In last episode, my semi regular co-host Ian KM4IK and were talking about the big stink that was doing on with some things that the ARRL Board of Directors were going to be voting on. Neither one of us were really up to speed on the whole thing as much as we should be, but we did our best, and we even said that we weren’t. However, after the episode I did receive multiple emails saying that I said something wrong, so I corrected it in this episode.

With that out of the way, I went on to talk about an upcoming event called the School Club Roundup. It is this month only a few days away actually. The event run February 12-16, 2018. It is an event that is geared for school amateur radio clubs to get on the air and make some contacts. Even if you are not in a school club though you can still get on the air and make contact with the school clubs that are on the air and help them make the points.

After that, I moved on to Hamvention. Another correction from last episode. Well I say correction, this time it wasn’t me though. In last episode we talked about how a new building was going to be built and available by this Hamvention. However, this week, the Hamvention committee released that it wouldn’t be started on until later in the year due to a material shortage.

I wrap up the episode reading some emails that I have received over the past few weeks. The last episode of 2017, I told yall what my plans were for 2018 and asked what some of yalls were and also asked some questions about what were yalls opinions on how my show is. I got a few responses, wish I would’ve had more though.

Until Next Time Yall…

73 de Curtis, K5CLM

In this episode of the Everything Ham Radio Podcast, we talk with Vance Martin, N3VEM, about how he takes his Ham Radio Equipment with him when he goes on business trips. If you travel at all, you know the boringness of sitting in a hotel room after working all day, right? Maybe it is a new city, or maybe you have to be up early and don’t want to “go out” and be out late so you are able to function the next day.

So why not take your ham radio equipment with you while you travel and use that down time to make some contacts? This can also give you a chance to get out of your shack and get some fresh air and make some contacts to boot.

Vance and I talk about everything from what he does before he leaves, to what to do at the airport to how he operates while he has down time while traveling. Check out the show notes and listen to the episode by following the link below:

http://www.everythinghamradio.com/podcast/87

In this episode of the Everything Ham Radio Podcast, we talk again with Ria Jairam, N2RJ. This time we are talking about the different JT Modes, JT65, JT9 and the new FT8!

We talk about its uses, how to operate and what you need to operate the different modes.

Check out the show notes to listen to the episode as well as get links to all the different things that we talk about at:

http://www.everythinghamradio.com/podcast/85

Have you ever wanted to be in a movie? Or maybe on TV? Well while you can make your own movie and you could be on a TV, you probably won’t be on commercial TV. However you can be on Amateur TV.

In this episode I talk with Tom O’Hara, W6ORG. Tom has been a ham for a while and had a successful ATV business for  over 50 years!! He retired and shut his business down at the end of 2014, but that hasn’t stopped him from working with Amateur TV!

Listen to this episode to find out more about Amateur TV and about Tom:

http://www.everythinghamradio.com/podcast/80

In this episode we talk about the Yaesu System Fusion DR-2X repeater, the upcoming Solar Eclipse and more.

There is some interesting new features on the DR-2X repeater over the DR-1X that came out a couple years ago, but there is also something that it doesn’t have. Some of these features, I wish that we had on our club repeater, but those features are not enough for us to go out and buy this version.

There are a lot of special event stations that are going to be on the air around August 21st this year when the full solar eclipse occurs. This is the first time since 1918 that a full solar eclipse has gone from one side of the US to the other. I unfortunately am to far south to the see the full eclipse, but I should get about a 75% one here in the DFW area.

We also talk about some other stuff, but you are going to have to check out the show notes and listen to the episode to find out what that is.

73s de Curtis, K5CLM

If any of yall listen to the Hamradio 360: Workbench podcast then you will know the names George and Jeremy. They are the host of that podcast and some good friends of mine. Several episodes ago they talked about some miniature data radios and some uses for them. I had some questions about it so I thought what better than to do that to come on and talk about them on an episode so that yall can hear them too.

I got all my questions answered, Thanks George!

We went on to talk about their podcast and things that they had been doing and even an upcoming show topic and then wrapped it up with their thoughts on how Hamvention was this year and what they thought about the new venue.

I think we had a great conversation and I hope yall do to.

Check out the show notes for information about the episode, links to all the items that we talked about and other information. You can also listen to the episode directly on the website or on your favorite podcast listening app.

http://www.everythinghamradio.com/podcast/77

Space Weather. The Sun-Earth Connection. Ionospheric radio propagation. Solar storms. Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). Solar flares and radio blackouts. All of these topics are interrelated for the amateur radio operator, especially when the activity involves the shortwave, or high-frequency, radiowave spectrum.

Learning about space weather and radio signal propagation via the ionosphere aids you in gaining a competitive edge in radio DX contests. Want to forecast the radio propagation for the next weekend so you know whether or not you should attend to the Honey-do list, or declare a radio day?

In the last ten years, amazing technological advances have been made in heliophysics research and solar observation. These advances have catapulted the amateur radio hobbyist into a new era in which computer power and easy access to huge amounts of data assist in learning about, observing, and forecasting space weather and to gain an understanding of how space weather impacts shortwave radio propagation, aurora propagation, and so on.

I hope to start “blogging” here about space weather and the propagation of radio waves, as time allows. I hope this finds a place in your journey of exploring the Sun-Earth connection and the science of radio communication.

With that in mind, I’d like to share some pretty cool science. Even though the video material in this article are from 2010, they provide a view of our Sun with the stunning solar tsunami event:

On August 1, 2010, the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in a tumult of activity. There was a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple plasma-filled filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection and more!

At approximately 0855 UTC on August 1, 2010, a C3.2 magnitude soft X-ray flare erupted from NOAA Active Sunspot Region 11092 (we typically shorten this by dropping the first digit: NOAA AR 1092).

At nearly the same time, a massive filament eruption occurred. Prior to the filament’s eruption, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) AIA instruments revealed an enormous plasma filament stretching across the sun’s northern hemisphere. When the solar shock wave triggered by the C3.2-class X-ray explosion plowed through this filament, it caused the filament to erupt, sending out a huge plasma cloud.

In this movie, taken by SDO AIA at several different Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) wavelengths such as the 304- and 171-Angstrom wavelengths, a cooler shock wave can be seen emerging from the origin of the X-ray flare and sweeping across the Sun’s northern hemisphere into the filament field. The impact of this shock wave may propelled the filament into space.

This movie seems to support this analysis: Despite the approximately 400,000 kilometer distance between the flare and the filament eruption, they appear to erupt together. How can this be? Most likely they’re connected by long-range magnetic fields (remember: we cannot see these magnetic field lines unless there is plasma riding these fields).

In the following video clip, taken by SDO AIA at the 304-Angstrom wavelength, a cooler shock wave can be seen emerging from the origin of the X-ray flare and sweeping across the sun’s northern hemisphere into the filament field. The impact of this shock wave propelled the filament into space. This is in black and white because we’re capturing the EUV at the 304-Angstrom wavelength, which we cannot see. SDO does add artificial color to these images, but the raw footage is in this non-colorized view.

The followling video shows this event in the 171-Angstrom wavelength, and highlights more of the flare event:

The following related video shows the “resulting” shock wave several days later. Note that this did NOT result in anything more than a bit of aurora seen by folks living in high-latitude areas (like Norway, for instance).

This fourth video sequence (of the five in the first video shown in this article) shows a simulation model of real-time passage of the solar wind. In this segment, the plasma cloud that was ejected from this solar tsunami event is seen in the data and simulation, passing by Earth and impacting the magnetosphere. This results in the disturbance of the geomagnetic field, triggering aurora and ionospheric depressions that degrade shortwave radio wave propagation.

At about 2/3rd of the way through, UTC time stamp 1651 UTC, the shock wave hits the magnetosphere.

This is a simulation derived from satellite data of the interaction between the solar wind, the earth’s magnetosphere, and earth’s ionosphere. This triggered aurora on August 4, 2010, as the geomagnetic field became stormy (Kp was at or above 5).

While this is an amazing event, a complex series of eruptions involving most of the visible surface of the sun occurred, ejecting plasma toward the Earth, the energy that was transferred by the plasma mass that was ejected by the two eruptions (first, the slower-moving coronal mass ejection originating in the C-class X-ray flare at sunspot region 1092, and, second, the faster-moving plasma ejection originating in the filament eruption) was “moderate.” This event, especially in relationship with the Earth through the Sun-Earth connection, was rather low in energy. It did not result in any news-worthy events on Earth–no laptops were fried, no power grids failed, and the geomagnetic activity level was only moderate, with limited degradation observed on the shortwave radio spectrum.

This “Solar Tsunami” is actually categorized as a “Moreton wave”, the chromospheric signature of a large-scale solar coronal shock wave. As can be seen in this video, they are generated by solar flares. They are named for American astronomer, Gail Moreton, an observer at the Lockheed Solar Observatory in Burbank who spotted them in 1959. He discovered them in time-lapse photography of the chromosphere in the light of the Balmer alpha transition.

Moreton waves propagate at a speed of 250 to 1500 km/s (kilometers per second). A solar scientist, Yutaka Uchida, has interpreted Moreton waves as MHD fast-mode shock waves propagating in the corona. He links them to type II radio bursts, which are radio-wave discharges created when coronal mass ejections accelerate shocks.

I will be posting more of these kinds of posts, some of them explaining the interaction between space weather and the propagation of radio signals.

For live space weather and radio propagation, visit http://SunSpotWatch.com/. Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://YouTube.com/NW7US.

The fourth video segment is used by written permission, granted to NW7US by NICT. The movie is copyright@NICT, Japan. The rest of the video is courtesy of SDO/AIA and NASA. Music is courtesy of YouTube, from their free-to-use music library. Video copyright, 2015, by Tomas Hood / NW7US. All rights reserved.