AmateurRadio.com

A Maker Faire is a gathering of makers, essentially anyone who builds stuff such robots, electronics, clothes, tools, and equipment.  It’s a very heterogeneous culture of people young and old, and includes do-it-youselfers (DIYs), teachers, engineers, scientists, hackers, and geeks.  Think of Maker Faires as hamfests for makers.  I attended Maker Faire New York City this year, my first Maker Faire.  Think of Maker Faire NYC as the Dayton Hamvention of hamfests.

Any drive into The City, as we call it around here, is adventurous.  This Faire was located at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) in Queens.  You couldn’t park anywhere near the event, but there were numerous public mass transit options and two offsite parking areas with shuttle buses.  We chose to park at Queens College and take the shuttle in.

The Faire consisted of mostly outdoor and some indoor exhibits, including ones that are part of NYSCI.  I can’t do this event justice with the pictures I took, but there’s a pretty good slideshow on the Maker Faire site.

The most popular area, at least judging by the line of people awaiting to enter, was the Radio Shack booth, believe it or not.  They had a build your own drone activity that people seemed to be falling all over themselves to get in.  If only Radio Shack could get lines like this in their stores.

The coolest contraption in my humble opinion was a toasted cheese sandwich machine.

On the Faire map I was pleased to see an area labeled Amateur Radio.  I donned my baseball cap embroidered with my callsign, normally reserved for the annual Dayton pilgrimage.  The way the map was labeled, I expected to find a whole row of amateur radio stuff.  There was one booth with two pop up canopies, manned by perhaps four hams.  One side of the booth had a portable rig mounted in a plywood enclosure with some accessory boxes, perhaps a digital station.  The other side of the booth had two tables with components and some kids soldering.

I want to be careful not to diminish or criticize the efforts of these amateurs and the organization they represented.  After all, these guys made the effort and had an amateur radio booth (which is more than I can say for other organizations).  But admittedly I was disappointed.  I was really dismayed there weren’t more booths, especially considering the number of amateur radio operators there are in NYC, probably more in a five mile radius than I have in my entire rural county in PA.  This is undoubtedly the largest gathering of people on the east coast who are interested in how things work, how to build things, and they’re smart people.  Wireless for many makers is just a shield that you buy and plop on an Arduino or a USB dongle you plug into a Raspberry Pi.  Amateur radio has so much to offer.

ARRL needs to have an exhibit at this event, in a big way, and not in the fashion they do at Dayton.  There needs to be interactive hands-on displays by enthusiastic high energy amateurs.  Not hardcore contesters or DXers, but amateurs who build stuff and can talk about practical applications that these makers can relate to and integrate into their existing projects and pursuits.  Even CW displays would be interesting for this audience, it just needs to not be presented as a code proficiency course or a rite of passage, but something that is fun.  Retro tech intrigues these people.  Vacuum tubes would be considered cool by many makers, especially if you had some homebrew rigs built on plywood with filaments lit up and some RF meters dancing around or big old speakers crackling with the sounds of code or sideband coming from a direct conversion receiver.  Fox hunts.  This crowd would eat that up.  Make a crystal radio with six components.  There are plenty of high power AM stations in NYC that you can receive on a simple crystal radio.  Kids holding Arrow antennas and listening to a satellite passing over.  There’s just so much that could be done to showcase amateur radio at this and other Maker Faires, and draw people into the hobby.  We’re missing a huge opportunity.  Huge.

This article was originally posted on Radio Artisan.

Here is this week’s space weather and geophysical report, issued 2016 Oct 10 0105 UTC.

Highlights of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 03 – 09 October 2016

Solar activity was at very low levels with a few background flares observed from Regions 2598 (N14, L=174, class/area Dai/140 on 07 Oct), 2599 (S14, L=144, class/area Cko/460 on 05 Oct) and 2600 (N13, L=105, class/area Cso/110 on 09 Oct). On 08 Oct, between 08/1500-1700 UTC, a 10 degree long filament erupted in the NE quadrant centered near N38E40. A slow-moving, asymmetric, partial-halo CME was observed in LASCO C2 imagery, first visible at 09/0048 UTC.

No proton events were observed at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was at high levels during the entire summary period. A maximum of 32,138 pfu was observed at 03/1640 UTC.

Geomagnetic field activity was highlighted by mostly unsettled to active levels on 03-05 Oct. An isolated minor storm (G1-Minor) period was observed early on 04 Oct. Mostly quiet levels were observed from 04-09 Oct with isolated unsettled and active periods were observed early on 07 and 08 Oct, respectively. The enhanced geomagnetic activity was due to high speed winds from a recurrent positive polarity coronal hole. Some further enhancement occurred early on 04 Oct due to CME effects from an eruptive filament observed early on 01 Oct.

The solar wind environment began the period at about 500 km/s, increased to near 600 km/s midday on 04 Oct and slowly decreased to end the period at about 370 km/s. Total field generally ranged from 2-6 nT with a peak of 10 nt observed midday on 04 Oct. The Bz component was mostly variable between +/- 6 nT. Phi angle was in a general positive orientation throughout the period.

Forecast of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 10 October – 05 November 2016

Solar activity is expected to be at very low levels with a chance for C-class flare activity throughout the outlook period.

No proton events are expected at geosynchronous orbit.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit is expected to be at high levels on 10-11, 16-18, 24-26, 30-31 Oct and 01-06 Nov increasing to very high levels on 27-29 Oct. This is due to the anticipated influence of multiple, recurrent CH HSSs. Normal to moderate levels are expected for the remainder of the outlook period.

Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be at unsettled to active levels on 11-18, 23-31 Oct and 01 Nov. G1 (Minor) field activity is possible on 13-15, 17 and 23-31 Oct with G2 (Moderate) levels possible on 24-26 Oct. This activity is due to the anticipated influence of multiple, recurrent CH HSSs. Additional enhancement to the field is expected on 13-14 Oct due to CME effects from the 08 Oct filament eruption. Generally quiet to unsettled conditions are expected for the remainder of the outlook period.

Don’t forget to visit our live space weather and radio propagation web site, at: http://SunSpotWatch.com/

Live Aurora mapping is at http://aurora.sunspotwatch.com/

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AmateurLogic.TV Episode 96 is now available for download.

It’s our 11th Anniversary and we give away the Icom IC-7300 with accessories from MFJ to one lucky ham.
Peters got tips before you buy an Antique Radio. Emile continues his cheap network experiments. Tommy joins the DStar QSO Party. George builds the Arduino Pushbutton Radio.

1:25:35

Download
YouTube

And the winner is Joseph Ryan, Jr, N3NAI of Cape Coral, Fl. Joseph’s name was selected in the random drawing during the October 15th episode.

On Saturday, I activated Bald Mountain (W0C/SP-115) for Summits On The Air. It was an awesome fall day here in the Rockies, so Joyce KØJJW and I were ready for some outdoor fun. When you say you are going to the summit of Bald Mountain, the usual response is “which Bald Mountain?” Fortunately, for SOTA purposes we can use the designator (W0C/SP-115) to drive out the ambiguity. Else, you have to deal with the fact there are 32 summits in Colorado known as Bald Mountain. And I am sure there are many more in other states.

SP-115 is a drive-up summit if you have a reasonable 4WD vehicle. For us, this meant taking the Jeep Wrangler to the top. (I am still recovering from a fractured ankle and just starting to hike a bit, so a drive-up opportunity sounded good to me.) Many maps do not show the road up Bald Mountain, so I included a portion of the latitude40smap.com map for the area (below). These recreational maps are excellent quality so I recommend you get one for exploring the area.

This summit is south of Buena Vista on Highway 285, which we exited at Fisherman’s Bridge, heading towards FS road 300. (Refer to the San Isabel National Forest or Latitude 40 map for details.) We followed FS 300 east which is easy 4WD.  About 2 miles in, we took FS 300B (marked) to the north which winds its way up Bald Mountain.

At 0.6 miles from the intersection of 300 and 300B, an unmarked 4WD road leads off to the left and proceeds around the west side of the mountain. Taking this route provides a much easier path than the main route leading to the east side of the mountain. (We had taken the main route on our previous activation.) The preferred road does one big switchback out to the west and then returns east to the summit. This road is easy 4WD but is a bit narrow so a full size SUV or truck may have trouble. Of course, you can always hike to the summit…most likely just following the road.

I got out my trusty Arrow 2m yagi antenna, connected it to the Yaesu FT-1D and started calling on 146.52 MHz. It took a while to get my four contacts but I kept at it. Actually, I worked five stations on 2m fm: KEØDMT, KDØMRC, K5UK, KAØABV and NØVXE. I was hoping to work WGØAT who was on the summit of Mount Herman, but I was unable to copy him. Thanks for the contacts! The summit has awesome views of the Collegiate Peaks to the west and it’s worth the trip just for the view.

73, Bob KØNR

The post SOTA Activation: Bald Mountain (W0C/SP-115) appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

In this episode, Martin M1MRB / W9ICQ is joined by Leslie Butterfield G0CIB Edmund Spicer M0MNG, Matthew Nassau M0NJX and Chris Howard M0TCH to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin Butler M6BOY rounds up the news in brief, and this episode’s feature is RFinder & Raynet Unification.

• Young UK Amateur Causing Emergency Services Havoc
• New Ofcom website
• Round-the-World Cyclist OZ1AA Returns
• 42 Years in Space for AO-7
• New Icom IC-7300 HF/50/70MHz Transceiver Firmware Update
• NZ 77-81 GHz Radiolocation and Vehicle Radar
• UNGO Ukrainian Amateur Radio League

In this episode, Martin M1MRB / W9ICQ is joined by Leslie Butterfield G0CIB Edmund Spicer M0MNG, Matthew Nassau M0NJX and Chris Howard M0TCH to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin Butler M6BOY rounds up the news in brief, and this episode’s feature is RFinder & Raynet Unification.

• Young UK Amateur Causing Emergency Services Havoc
• New Ofcom website
• Round-the-World Cyclist OZ1AA Returns
• 42 Years in Space for AO-7
• New Icom IC-7300 HF/50/70MHz Transceiver Firmware Update
• NZ 77-81 GHz Radiolocation and Vehicle Radar
• UNGO Ukrainian Amateur Radio League