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Here is this week’s space weather and geophysical report, issued 2015 Jun 29 0647 UTC.

Highlights of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 22 – 28 June 2015

Solar activity was at low to high levels. The period began at high levels when Region 2371 (N13, L=302, class/area Fkc/1180 on 21 June) produced an M6/2b flare at 22/1823 UTC with an associated Castelli-U spectral burst, Type II radio sweep (1480 km/s), 1000 sfu Tenflare, and a full halo coronal mass ejection (CME) with an approximate speed of 1047 km/s. Solar activity returned to high levels again on 25 June as Region 2371 produced a long-duration M7/3b flare at 25/0816 UTC with associated Type II (2056 km/s) and Type IV radio sweeps, 3800 sfu Tenflare, and an asymmetric full halo CME with an approximate speed of 1500 km/s. Region 2371 remained relatively quiet and stable after 25 June, only producing low-level C-class flaring for the rest of the period.

A greater than 10 MeV proton event was in progress at the beginning of the period. The event began at 21/2135 UTC, likely associated with an M2/1n flare at 21/0142 UTC from Region 2371, reached a maximum flux value of 1070 pfu at 22/1900 UTC and ended 24/0705 UTC. A brief enhancement to the S3 (Strong) levels was observed due to a shock enhancement from the arrival of the 21 June CME. Another greater than 10 MeV proton event began at 26/0350 UTC in association with an M7/3b flare at 25/0816 UTC from Region 2371, reached a maximum of 22 pfu (S1-Minor) at 27/0030 UTC and ended at 27/0755 UTC.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was high levels through the period with the exception of 23 June. A maximum flux of 26,376 pfu was observed at 24/1620 UTC.

Geomagnetic field activity ranged from quiet to severe storm conditions. At 22/0451 UTC, a small shock was observed at the NASA/ACE spacecraft. Total field increased from 8 nT to 17 nT with a corresponding solar wind increase from 360 km/s to 431 km/s. The shock was associated with the arrival of the 19 June CME caused by a filament eruption in the SE quadrant observed in SDO/AIA imagery beginning at 19/0500 UTC. A geomagnetic sudden impulse (SI) of 19 nT (Guam) was observed at 22/0545 UTC. The geomagnetic field responded with unsettled to active levels. At 22/1759 UTC, another shock was observed in ACE data from the 21 June CME associated with a double peak M2 flare from Region 2371 at 21/0142 UTC. Total field increased to a maximum of 41 nT at 22/1935 UTC, solar wind speed increased to 737 km/s and the Bz component went negative to -39 nT at 22/1850 UTC. A prolonged period of mostly southward Bz occurred between 23/0013 UTC and 23/1246 UTC reaching as high as -25 nT. An SI of 48 nT (Hartland) was observed at 21/1650 UTC. The geomagnetic field responded with minor to major storm levels with severe storm periods observed between 22/1800-2100 UTC and 23/0000-0600 UTC. At 24/1258 UTC, the 22 June CME associated with the M6/2b flare on 22 June was observed in ACE data. Solar wind speeds increased from approximately 550 km/s to around 760 km/s with a relatively weak increase in total field from 5 nT to 13 nT. The Bz component was mostly positive during this event with negative values reaching a maximum of -11 nT between 25/0547 UTC and 25/1357 UTC. The geomagnetic field responded with only quiet to active periods on 24 June, but increased to minor to major storm levels mid-period on 25 June. Another CME associated with the M7/3b flare on 25 June arrived at 27/0223 UTC at the ACE spacecraft. Solar wind speeds increased from near 475 km/s to 860 km/s before slowly decreasing to 480 km/s by the end of the day. Total field reached a maximum of 13 nT at 27/0304 UTC and the Bz component was variable between +9 nT and -7 nT. As a result, the geomagnetic field never increased beyond unsettled conditions.

Forecast of Solar and Geomagnetic Activity 29 June – 25 July 2015

Solar activity is expected to be at low levels with a chance for M-class flare (R1-R2, Minor-Moderate) activity from 30 June through 24 July with the return of old Regions 2365 (S13, L=079) on 30 June, 2367 (S20, L=002) on 05 July, and 2371 (N13, L=302) on 11 July.

There is a chance for a greater than 10 MeV proton event from 11 July through 24 July with the return of old Region 2371 to the visible disk.

The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit is expected to be at high levels from 29-30 Jun and again from 08-19 July due to residual CME effects and recurrent coronal hole high speed streams (CH HSS).

Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be at active to minor storm (G1-Minor) levels from 06-08 July and again from 11-12 July due to recurrent CH HSS activity.

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Two years after discovering the hobby of High Altitude Ballooning I have migrated from being just a passive tracker and finally completed my first flights assisted by other members of the South Kesteven ARS.

Ready to launch

Back in March I posted about the opportunity I had to make a launch at this years Swaton Vintage Day and the 10th World Egg Throwing Championship

South Kesteven ARS were going to hold a special event station with the call sign GB2EGG. During the planning stage I jokingly suggested throwing an egg in to space on board a balloon, I shouldn't have yoked...

The whole venture captured everyone's imagination, sadly putting the special event station in the shade but we certainly got a lot of publicity for the club and amateur radio in general.

Featured on front page of local paper

There was certainly a lot to learn and get organised, not only did I have to design and build the flight computer which was the easy part but I had to build the payload containers get the balloon, parachute, cord the lifting gas (Helium) and build a filler assembly as well as getting official permission from the CAA for the launch.

The information on the UKHAS wiki as well as Dave Akerman's High Altitude Ballooning, From The Ground Up (and back again) were invaluable.

The cost of this venture was not insubstantial and thankfully MADHEN - The Ultimate Party Band agreed to sponsor the flight which helped greatly and I received a nice donation from fellow club member Mark Orbell (M0OBL)

Months of work and lots of last minute hitches but I was ready.

Two flights were planned an altitude 'burst' flight with a raw egg payload with a parachute decent. The main tracker MADHEN would broadcast SSDV images and telemetry with a telemetry backup tracker EGG1 suspended below it.  The second flight was a foil party balloon 'floater' with a tracker kindly donated by Steve Smith G0TDJ of ProjectAVR

Both flights flew and were a great success, unfortunately the SSDV tracker failed early in the flight so no in flight images were received.

The main payload is pictured below before the flight resting on its side. The Styrofoam box contained the flight computer and radio transmitter with a camera attached to the Raspberry Pi and the "flying saucer" model which contained the egg was positioned to be visible.
 

As this test image shows the 'egg saucer' should have had the earth below it.


However the arduino based backup tracker which was suspended below it worked perfectly.

There were some issues with getting CAA approval because the sky was very busy on the day including the last remaining Vulcan Bomber VH-558 making its farewell flight in the area, cue jokes about the Vulcan getting scrambled... but approval was given for a morning flight, not ideal for the organisers but we were still a spectacle for the handful who were there early.

Starting the fill

Checking the neck lift, made difficult by the wind

Stewart (M0SDM) helping me tie off the balloon and payload cord

The strong gusty wind made launch difficult

Me and Stewart making a dash to assist the launch

It started so well,  I was receiving telemetry and image packets and then transmission stopped


However as I said the other tracker worked brilliantly and this was the final flight path as visualised in Google Earth. The ascent and decent rate and the burst altitude were exactly as planned and predicted, so I know I got the neck lift measurement right even with the high wind on the day.

Path of MADHEN/EGG1

A splashdown at sea was inevitable due to the wind conditions, hopefully it it survived the landing it may wash up on a beach somewhere and we can retrieve the images.

With what little Helium remained I was able to lightly fill and launch a foil party balloon carrying a blown egg shell as a 'floater' which made a valiant attempt to reach the continent at 6-7km high travelling at 120+km/hr where it reportably hit bad weather and was downed.

Path of EGGDX in comparison to MADHEN/EGG1

 All in all an eggscellent day!
Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Two years after discovering the hobby of High Altitude Ballooning I have migrated from being just a passive tracker and finally completed my first flights assisted by other members of the South Kesteven ARS.

Ready to launch

Back in March I posted about the opportunity I had to make a launch at this years Swaton Vintage Day and the 10th World Egg Throwing Championship

South Kesteven ARS were going to hold a special event station with the call sign GB2EGG. During the planning stage I jokingly suggested throwing an egg in to space on board a balloon, I shouldn't have yoked...

The whole venture captured everyone's imagination, sadly putting the special event station in the shade but we certainly got a lot of publicity for the club and amateur radio in general.

Featured on front page of local paper

There was certainly a lot to learn and get organised, not only did I have to design and build the flight computer which was the easy part but I had to build the payload containers get the balloon, parachute, cord the lifting gas (Helium) and build a filler assembly as well as getting official permission from the CAA for the launch.

The information on the UKHAS wiki as well as Dave Akerman's High Altitude Ballooning, From The Ground Up (and back again) were invaluable.

The cost of this venture was not insubstantial and thankfully MADHEN - The Ultimate Party Band agreed to sponsor the flight which helped greatly and I received a nice donation from fellow club member Mark Orbell (M0OBL)

Months of work and lots of last minute hitches but I was ready.

Two flights were planned an altitude 'burst' flight with a raw egg payload with a parachute decent. The main tracker MADHEN would broadcast SSDV images and telemetry with a telemetry backup tracker EGG1 suspended below it.  The second flight was a foil party balloon 'floater' with a tracker kindly donated by Steve Smith G0TDJ of ProjectAVR

Both flights flew and were a great success, unfortunately the SSDV tracker failed early in the flight so no in flight images were received.

The main payload is pictured below before the flight resting on its side. The Styrofoam box contained the flight computer and radio transmitter with a camera attached to the Raspberry Pi and the "flying saucer" model which contained the egg was positioned to be visible.
 

As this test image shows the 'egg saucer' should have had the earth below it.


However the arduino based backup tracker which was suspended below it worked perfectly.

There were some issues with getting CAA approval because the sky was very busy on the day including the last remaining Vulcan Bomber VH-558 making its farewell flight in the area, cue jokes about the Vulcan getting scrambled... but approval was given for a morning flight, not ideal for the organisers but we were still a spectacle for the handful who were there early.

Starting the fill

Checking the neck lift, made difficult by the wind

Stewart (M0SDM) helping me tie off the balloon and payload cord

The strong gusty wind made launch difficult

Me and Stewart making a dash to assist the launch

It started so well,  I was receiving telemetry and image packets and then transmission stopped


However as I said the other tracker worked brilliantly and this was the final flight path as visualised in Google Earth. The ascent and decent rate and the burst altitude were exactly as planned and predicted, so I know I got the neck lift measurement right even with the high wind on the day.

Path of MADHEN/EGG1

A splashdown at sea was inevitable due to the wind conditions, hopefully it it survived the landing it may wash up on a beach somewhere and we can retrieve the images.

With what little Helium remained I was able to lightly fill and launch a foil party balloon carrying a blown egg shell as a 'floater' which made a valiant attempt to reach the continent at 6-7km high travelling at 120+km/hr where it reportably hit bad weather and was downed.

Path of EGGDX in comparison to MADHEN/EGG1

 All in all an eggscellent day!
Andrew Garratt, MØNRD, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from East Midlands, England. Contact him at [email protected].

Hello again, and welcome to Episode #149 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode we tackle a number of interesting and diverse topics: Starting with Field Day and an online course on Climate Change, we move to software patent legislation, deep topics like buildroot and custom Linux images, and then to hardware reverse engineering for your benefit and a utility for helping you save battery power on your laptop. We even manage to get in an interview with our ambassador to SELF, Darrell, KI4LLA. Don't miss one action-packed second.

73 de The LHS Guys

Russ Woodman, K5TUX, co-hosts the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast which is available for download in both MP3 and OGG audio format. Contact him at [email protected].

Previously, I had written about how the use of SSB made the difference while activating Prospect Mountain (W0C/FR-069) for Summits On The Air (SOTA). This time I was the SOTA chaser, trying to work Brad WA6MM as he activated two peaks near Breckenridge, Colorado.

It was the Saturday of ARRL Field Day, so I planned to be out at our FD site in Black Forest. Brad and I had coordinated in advance and pretty much concluded that it would be difficult or impossible to make the contact on FM. Brad decided to take his FT-817 along with a homebrew 4-element yagi to give him 2m SSB capability. Out at the FD site, I saw that Brad was spotted on Bald Mountain (W0C/PR-019) via SOTAwatch early in the morning, so I borrowed the FD VHF station to try to work him. It was an FT-897 pushing 50 watts to a 4-element yagi up about 30 feet. I heard Brad clearly on 144.200 MHz (SSB calling frequency) and we made the contact.

I estimate that the contact was about 75 miles. I did not do a careful analysis of the terrain but the the signal had to get over the Rampart Range and quite a few other mountains to get from Black Forest to Bald Mountain. The summit of Bald Mountain is at 13,684 feet, so that certainly helps.

A few hours later, Brad showed up on the summit of Boreas Mountain (W0C/SP-030), another 13er near Breckenridge. By now, the Field Day station was in use, so I pulled out my own FT-817 and a 3-element Arrow yagi. Holding it in my hand, I pointed it towards Boreas Mountain and tuned to 144.200 MHz USB. This time Brad was even weaker but still readable, so we completed the contact.

In both cases, Brad was fair to good copy but just above the noise, I am sure that using FM would not have gotten the job done. For serious VHF work, 75 miles is not that great of a distance but we were running QRP power levels with small yagi antennas.

Brad and I are both concluding we need to encourage the use of SSB for 2m SOTA here in Colorado. It is common to end up on a high peak in the Colorado backcountry and not have enough range to reach the larger population centers. Sure there are more people active on 2m FM, but if no one is within range, it does not matter.

Congratulations to WA6MM for first activations of two more challenging summits in Colorado and thanks for 18 chaser points!

73, Bob K0NR

The post Use SSB on VHF For Better Range on SOTA Peaks appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Bob Witte, KØNR, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Colorado, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

As part of my recovery I usually do a short 5 minute walk morning and night.  When out this evening I did a “hard” reset of my 10m and 6m WSPR stations.  All power was removed, the PC (used with the FT817 on 6m) was turned off for the duration of the walk. Now home again both the 6m and 10m WSPR kits were turned on again and the whole lot sync’d to Internet time.

I hope to stay on both bands overnight, although, so far, I have not managed to catch any transatlantic Es openings. I remain hopeful. Because of the high thunder risk later in the week I may have to go QRT though, which will be a pity. Hopefully this will be a short break only.

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.

courtesy: arrl.org

The annual Field Day weekend always brings back fond memories of my ham radio teenage years.

Field Day always followed the end of school and the start of the summer holidays so it was always a weekend that I looked forward to, months in advance.

I always went out with the Vancouver Amateur Radio Club (VE7ARV) who used the same spot each year, just above the last street of homes high up on the slopes of West Vancouver ... it was at the base of Hollyburn Mountain and was a spectacular visual site, giving southerly views from east through west. At times it seemed like you could almost see California from up there ... it was a great spot for both HF and VHF. Our Field Day site has long been reclaimed by palatial-sized home in the prestigious 'British Properties' region of Vancouver's North Shore.


Sadly many of the organizers and operators that I remember from my youth are now long gone but they were an enthusiastic group of old-time hams that always had the time to make a young kid feel welcome and part of an important operation. Many of the same fellows were responsible for a lot of teens getting their ticket back in the late 50's and 60's. Tuesday nights were always spent in the basement 'classroom' of Hedley Rendell, VE7XW, who gave so much of his time to Elmering prospective hams as well as providing the trailored crank-up towers for our FD operations. He later established Rendell-Paret Electronics in partnership with Bill Paret, VE7AM, and the contents of Hedley's vast basement collection of parts was the beginning of a business that still flourishes to this day.

Field Day always had many high points for me. One of the best was being able to operate some top-notch equipment compared to my humble home station which consisted of an old Heathkit AT-1 and VF-1 VFO and then later, a much-used DX-35, purchased on one of the family's summer shopping trips to Seattle. In those days, the city was home to several ham radio shops and at least a dozen radio-surplus stores, all now long gone.

There were usually a couple of Collins 75A4's and later, state-of-the-art Drake 2B's. The Johnson Ranger was always reliable and such a pleasure to operate but there were always a few hundred-pound hernia-makers like the Heathkit DX-100's and the Johnson Viking II's that had to be lugged from back seats to tents every year. That's where us young guys came in handy.


VHF activity back then was mainly FM (at least in the Vancouver area) and every year we would manage to work down to the weekend hilltopers in Oregon, mainly due to our elevated location. 2m FM rigs in those days were all converted taxi rigs, mainly Motorola 5V's, run on their built-in DC vibrator supply or on a homebrewed power supply. There were at least a hundred guys on 147.33 FM, all with old taxi rigs and the frequency was busy 24/7 it seemed. These were the days before repeaters and working 50 miles was a real accomplishment.

I usually took the 40m CW shift and would operate all night. The band was always amazingly crowded with nothing but FD stations throughout the entire activity ... even the 40m phone band was plugged solid with AM action, all working the FD contest. I would never ever sleep at Field Day and would go home exhausted, usually sleeping an entire Monday, to recharge my battery ... fun days.

I haven't been out on Field Day since my late teens as other things in life became more important but I'll never forget those wonderful weekends and the great fun that was had, so many years ago
Steve McDonald, VE7SL, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].