Chip: Welcome to the human race, mortality, and humble. Now, if you'd please, stop peeing in everyone else's corn flakes. Thank you. QRP 73'ses, Jeff
Tell you what: in these days of dire conditions, why not agree to start on QRP, then when contact is impossible, switch to QRO. 73 Chip W1YW
Nah. I am an astrophysicist. HUGE belches from the sun now happening and hitting us.. GO look it up. A=54.
QRP JT65 is rapidly becoming impractical on HF (MF , yes) and powers of 100 watts will become the norm in the next couple of years. Life IS too short for QRP--when conditions dictate higher ERP's for successful contacts.
The Ap index tells you what HF radio wave propagation conditions were yesterday. Yesterday's Ap ranged between 80 and 9 which was at major geomagnetic storming conditions to unsettled geomagnetic conditions. The Kp index is for what's going on today. Since 0000 UTC the 3 hour interval Kp numbers have been 5 5 3 4 3 which is at minor geomagnetic storming conditions to unsettled geomagnetic conditions. I do allot of SWL'ing both DX and program listening of shortwave broadcast radio stations. At this time of the day 1615 UTC in central Florida I like to listen to radio stations on 15 meters. But the band is totally dead due to ongoing geomagnetic storming. I also listen on 16 meters and it's nearly as dead.
Kp is currently 3 and hasn't gone above 6 in the last few days. The high A figure is due to the local magnetic field in the solar wind tilting south. As the Bard has it, "Much ado about nothing", the aurora has moved south a little, it has been visible from your northern States, but hasn't been energetic enough to come into my sky! I would expect a bit more fun and games if there was a strong X flare in a geoeffective position but even the most powerful outbursts of the last several solar cycles hardly rated describing as "mini Carrington Events" and the current crop of sunspots (2644, 2645, 2646) are too feeble to produce anything more powerful than a C3 minor burp! What is your field of work in astrophysics? Brian
I live in a HOA, reduced maintance frees me up to play radio. Antenna restrictions and relations with neighbors teaches me to hone my skills. Learning lots about transmission lines and restricted sized antennas. Can pump out 200 watts for emergencies and spend time joining nets just for that. 70% of my time is at 2.5 watts. Try all modes for kicks! Build my own interfaces. When I'm not there I'm at the beach or flying. "Do what you like".!
I don't care: my attitude is FB--stop reflecting your own insecurities and limitations on others. Your blog says it all--FRINGE indeed.. Happy guy--sorry that REALLY bothers you. Have a NICE day! 73 Chip W1YW
Don't be foolish. Just because some New Englanders misuse retarded as meaning--retahded-- doesn't mean that was the use of the word. Retarded means behind in time. Use correctly. I did. You owe me an apology.
Obviously Chip is just joking when he talks about a mini Carrington event. I think sometimes we misunderstand his sarcastic sense of humor, I know I do or did. Once I realized this I started seeing many of his comments as very funny. The highest K was 6, right now it's 3 and currently we have a G2 storm... in other words, almost nothing.
