PRC mtg July 17

Field Day Report It’s hard to believe that Field Day 2017 has come and gone.  But the memories will always be with us.  And to make it easy, several members took some really great photos.  Come to the Monday July 17th meeting and enjoy their photo work and a report on our operating success. Many … Continue reading “PRC mtg July 17”

Field Day Report

It’s hard to believe that Field Day 2017 has come and gone.  But the memories will always be with us.  And to make it easy, several members took some really great photos.  Come to the Monday July 17th meeting and enjoy their photo work and a report on our operating success.

Many thanks to everyone who made 2017 Field Dad one of the best ever– and you know who you are.   See you at the meeting.

36 Days Until the Solar Eclipse QSO Party!

On Monday, Aug. 21, Americans will witness nature’s most spectacular show — a total eclipse of the sun.  What is a solar eclipse? Well, the moon orbits Earth approximately every 27 days. A solar eclipse is the cosmic coincidence when the moon passes exactly between Earth and the sun, thereby casting a shadow onto Earth and blocking our view of the sun.
Partial, total and annular eclipses can be viewed every so often depending on one’s geographic location on Earth, but next month will be the first time in 99 years that the United States will experience a coast-to-coast total solar eclipse. The path of the moon’s shadow, or where the eclipse reaches totality, will cover 14 states from Oregon to South Carolina. Unfortunately, the total (100%) solar eclipse will not be viewable in Northeast Ohio, but that doesn’t mean we will miss out on this celestial event.

Here’s a link to a most spectacular animation of the August eclipse.  https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=4314

How will the solar eclipse effect radio communications?  We’re about to find out. Ward Silver, N0AX in the August 2017 QST (p. 94) informs us of a unique Solar Eclipse QSO Party designed to flood the airways with contacts, all measured by automated receiver networks of the Reverse Beacon Network, PSKReporter, and WSPRNet. When those observations are combined with the logs from individual stations, the result will be one of the largest ionospheric experiments ever performed. Silver’s article goes on to explain how hams can have a starring role in this great experiment.

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The above was based on articles from August 2017, ARRL QST, p. 94 and  Sun Papers article by Morgan Paskert of the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center http://www.cleveland.com/faces-of-the-suns/index.ssf/2017/07/heres_how_to_make_the_most_of.html

The Eclipse 2017 site provides a load of valuable information and says “We’ll See You in the Shade”:   http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/basics.htm

IMPORTANT: Never view the sun or a solar event directly. Paskert’s article describes how to view the sun safely.

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Hal Rogers K8CMD

President, Communications Director