Basics yes but how much has GPS helped farming, I could apply fertilizer the old way from taking a few samples and batch treating the whole field. However it is more efficient to take grid samples all labelled with their Geo/location. Send the dirt to the local distributor and have them prepare a Geo map for their spreader and schedule an apply date. On that date the giant spreader comes out all loaded with the correct solutions and the apply points. If GPS goes belly up I do not want to waste fertilizer, also I live in the Water shed for the Rifle River, I do not want the EPA and DNR coming to visit me about run off getting to the river, its called compliance, Thank you GPS..
Yeah! And we tried to drag those black pointers into the green area while monitoring some bands, and --would you believe it-- the band conditions didn't improve one bit?! Seriously, I'm going to give that site a try for awhile. Even if the predictions there aren't 90%+ accurate, it's certainly better than nothing. Anything is better than the NOAA solar charts that I've been monitoring on www.w0btu.com. Here's how he says it works: http://www.bandconditions.com/ABOUT.html
"It's is based on a new Ionospheric sounding method called "HF Ionospheric Interferometry" which operates very similarly to the PolSAR system used by NASA." A bit of technical mumbo-jumbo don't you think? The web is full of these websites. Just cut and paste links to taxpayer supported NOAA.jpgs and just like that, ta-dah! your a propagation website. Gotta have balls to do that and then beg for money and/or try and sell something. Like I said, he is not selling anything -no ads -nothing... It just smells funny. For all you know, he probably has tied a random number generator to a webpage.
Is is? Hmmmm. ... Are you talking about www.w0btu.com? I recently put those NOAA charts there, and made the page auto-refreshing, for my own use, and to share with a ham in Massachusetts. Those charts are often on my computer monitor when I'm listening or operating, and I'm trying to learn how to correlate them to the band conditions. And the ad at the top is for a product we sell. We're self employed, and the ad will hopefully help us make ends meet here. I was not making fun of bandconditions.com. Maybe you could tell us more about how it works. I'd like to see what Eric, KL7AJ has to say about this. I used to use those ionospheric sounding graphs until they stopped being published.
The long lengths of wires, as available, act as a receiving antenna to absorb energy from a wide variety of wavelengths. Some telegraph coils actually went up in smoke and telegraph operators were shocked!
Biz, That yellow background on http://www.bandconditions.com/ looks real nice, compared to the white. I see that you use .jpg files. Not to be picky, but for that type of image (containing large areas with solid colors), a .gif or .png would look a little better (IMHO . I edited 97.jpg in Gimp (Free alternative to Photoshop) and converted it to PNG and GIF. The colors in the PNG and GIF files are solid and brighter, compared to the JPG with typical compression artifacts. Also, the file size is a little smaller and the page would load faster in some cases. If I would have spent more time editing it, I could have got the file size even smaller than I did, even with the border and arrow. See what you think. Sorry I zapped the black arrow and your nice 3D border. EDIT: Right now bandconditions.com shows 40 meters between 97 and 100. Listening to 40m right now, I'd say that's very accurate.
How does a power grid brace it self, go open circuit, shunt it self to ground? How does it make the choice? What logic does it use to choose?
The same as they always do, by utilizing spare generating capacity and adding extra reactance to offset the predominantly DC voltages that get superimposed upon their grid...up to a point, after which they would have to respond by aggressively shedding load (either a coordinated blackout, or an uncoordinated one if they wait too long to decide) in order to free up the necessary reserve capacity to continue dealing with the event. The real problems arise if they wait too long to make those calls, particularly in an extreme event, in which case generators running well beyond their design limits will eventually fail (which results in extended downtime if they fail) or if the (DC) currents over saturate transformers (resulting in them overheating) leading to widespread damage to critical transformers (for which available spares are almost nonexistent).
Is it DC or could it be VHF that causes the cores to over heat? At some point the fuses should open and then the operators need to turn down the heat in boilers and close intake to water turbines, being careful to not slam them shut.
I don't understand why you feel the need to criticize http://www.bandconditions.com . What's fishy about it? Do you approach everything in a negative manner? It looks like a very useful web page to me and I applaud it's creator! 73, Thomas F. Giella W4HM Lakeland, FL, USA
http://www.bandconditions.com looks like an interesting site. But I have some questions. Like where (geographically) are the measurements captured? For instance on their website, the data for 15 meters right now shows "23" -- but the Hawaii reading shows "43". That's a moderate amount of variation...
Thomas, that's his own web site he's making fun of. I didn't realize that at first either. Look at the very bottom of http://www.bandconditions.com/ABOUT.html.
There's some clue at http://www.bandconditions.com/ABOUT.html Are you saying the two readings should be closer? The continental US is "a moderate amount of variation" in distance from Hawaii. I haven't spent much time on it; but so far, this real-time site looks very useful to me. EDIT: reading http://www.bandconditions.com/ABOUT.html closer, I now see why the background color was yellow when I looked at it yesterday: If everything is normal, then the background color of the main page remains WHITE. If something is occurring (Like a X or M class flare or CME) then the background color will change to a light YELLOW to caution you that something is going on that "may" affect propagation. If something major is going on that "is" directly affecting propagation, then the background page color will turn to a light RED to warn you to check the bulletins for further information. In this manner, you ONLY have to read the propagation bulletins when something important is going on. This feature is only implemented in the main "CONUS" page at the present.
Well, I am just concerned about data variations that might suggest some "inaccuracies" in the algorithm. Another case in point: I "camped on" the main page of the website, and refreshed the page every 15 seconds or so. Within just 3 or 4 minutes -- as can be confirmed by the times in the picture below -- there was a substantial change in some of the values. Especially on 17m and 15m. Is this type of variation expected for ham bands, in this short a space of time???
