GUYWIRE
MAY 2009
Editor VE5SC sewert@sasktel.net
The
online publication of the REGINA AMATEUR RADIO ASSOCIATION is published
monthly except July and August and is distributed free of charge as a
service of RARA to all licensed hams in the Regina Area who have e-mail
addresses. Anyone NOT wishing to receive future copies should send an
e-mail to the editor and your name will be removed from the mailing
list.
The RARA WEBSITE can be found at:
www.ve5nn.ca
The
website contains RARA news, repeater lists, net listings as well as
links to other amateur resources. Club meetings are held the 2nd
Wednesday of each month, with the exception of July and August, at the
Science Center.
NEXT MEETING: MAY 13TH 7:30 PM
IMAX BOARD ROOM SCIENCE CENTER
Take the elevator to the top floor and go past the IMAX projection room.
RICK, VE5RJR WILL GIVE A PRESENTATION ON MAPPING AND GPS.
ONE LUCKY ATTENDEE WILL WALK AWAY WITH AN ARRL REPEATER DIRECTORY.
IF
THE IMAX ENTRANCE DOOR IS LOCKED, SOMEONE WILL BE AT THE DOOR WITH
DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO GET TO THE IMAX BOARDROOM. When the Science Center
returns to summer hours this should no longer be necessary.
SEVEN NEW HAMS
As
a result of the club sponsored classes which have just concluded we are
happy to announce that seven people passed and another one with be
re-writing shortly. Congratulations to the new hams.
UPCOMING EVENTS
I LOVE REGINA RUN - Sunday May 24 - 9 am from City Hall
We
need a number of people to cover the course from City Hall to the park
and back. We run from about 8:30am to 11 am. There will be some traffic
control involved, but
generally the RPS will cover the busy areas. If you go to the City website, the info and map are there.
Let me know if you can help.
Bill Wood
VE5EE
FIELD DAY JUNE 27/28th
2009 SASKATCHEWAN HAMFEST
Date: Saturday, July 11th.
Location: LANIGAN, Saskatchewan At the junction of Hwys 16 and 20 http://www.town.lanigan.sk.ca/
Time from (approximately):
Saskatoon: 1 1/4 hours
Regina/Moose Jaw: 2 hours
Humboldt: 30 minutes
Watrous/Manitou Spa: 30 minutes
Wynyard: 40 minutes
Yorkton: 2 hours
Lanigan is a town of 1200, with all amenities:
Two
motels, hospital, shopping mall, service stations, restaurants/coffee
shop, museum, RCMP detachment, pharmacy, golf course (grass greens),
parks and Lions Campground (reservations accepted 365-3107).
Hamfest activities will take place at the Arena/Town Hall
complex, located near the north end of town on
Main St. All services and attractions are within walking distance if you are ambulatory.
Tentative Hamfest schedule:
9:00 am - 12:00 noon:
Registration: Free to SARL members, $10 for non-members (really, folks, an SARL membership cost only 5 bucks more!!)
Fleamarket - Share your Treasures!!
Please email dfklatt@sasktel.net (David VE5GN) for table reservations. Cost $2 for members, $3 for non-members.
Remember, folks, this is a non-profit event. Any revenue left after facility costs will be turned over to a local charity.
12:00
noon: Hosted BBQ lunch. We are working hard to make this a
complimentary occasion. If there is a cost, it will be very
minimal.
1:00 - 4:00 pm: SARL AGM, sessions of interest (details to come)
Sun has fewest sunspots since 1913, better GPS
Updated Fri. Apr. 3 2009 8:04 AM ET
IRLP REPORT
The
IRLP service on the VE5WM repeater has been down due to continuing
problems with linking to the node site. The club has decided to
move the node location to the club station (VE5NN) site at the Science
Center. We are presently negotiating for the donation of an internet
connection there with an ISP provider. This would tie in well with
plans to remotely control the club station. Depending on how long it
takes to make the move, the node may be temporarily moved to the VE5SC
QTH.
GERMAN HAMS BOUNCE SIGNALS OFF VENUS
On
March 25, 2009, a group of German hams bounced radio signals off the
surface of Venus, marking the first time Amateur Radio operators have
sent and received signals directed to another planet. The team's
transmitter generated about 6 kW CW @ 2.4 GHz, the signal traveled
about 100 million kilometers and had a round trip delay of about five
minutes.
The Earth-Venus-Earth ("EVE") experiment was repeated
on March 26 for several hours with "good echoes" from Venus. Morse code
was used to transmit the well-known 'HI' signature (four dots followed
by two dots). All things considered, this is a landmark accomplishment
for ham radio operators.
http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/09/0403/
MORSE CODE MAKES A COMEBACK
Here's
a real surprise for those who think that Morse Code is dead or dying.
It is reported that the number of Morse Code ("CW") logs submitted for
the 2008 CQ World Wide DX Contest exceeded the number of voice ("SSB")
logs for the first time in more than 20 years. A total of 5013 SSB logs
and 5272 CW logs were submitted.
Adapted from Amateur Radio Newsline Report 1654 for 4/24/09
THE SUN HAS FEWEST SUNSPOTS SINCE 1913
WASHINGTON
(AP)-- The sun has been unusually quiet lately, with fewer sunspots and
weaker magnetic fields than in nearly a century. A quiet sun is
good for Earth -- GPS systems are more accurate, satellites stay in
orbit longer and even the effects of manmade global warming are
marginally reduced, though just by fractions of a degree.
It's all a
normal part of the strange but regular cycles of the sun's activity.
Scientists don't know why it happens, but "for humankind it's
probably a good thing," says David Hathaway, chief solar physicist at
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. This lower
activity is also shrinking our atmosphere a bit -- again, not a problem.
The
sun isn't bombarding the Earth with the usual amount of short-wave
radiation that expands the atmosphere. Researchers at the University of
Texas in Dallas found the
Earth's upper atmospheric boundary at the lowest in the history of the space age. It's about 200 kilometres lower than normal.
For
centuries, people have been counting sunspots, which are cooler, darker
areas of intense magnetic fields that form on the sun's surface. The
number of sunspots in recent
months has been the lowest since 1913,
according to NASA. Scientists are looking as far back as the
early 1800s for similar quiet periods. They generally last about five
years.
This quiet spell, which started in 2007, may follow suit.
Scientists last fall were fooled when sunspot activity briefly ramped
up and experts figured the quiet cycle was
over. They were wrong.
Marc Hairston, a space scientist at UT-Dallas, compared it to the stock
market. Just when you think it can't sink anymore, it does. "This
is the lowest we've ever seen," Hairston said of the solar activity.
"We thought we'd be out of it by now, but we're not." Generally
sunspots, the easiest measurement of solar activity,
follow a
predictable 11-year cycle of high, then low, activity. During the last
high solar period, there were sunspots each day -- sometimes hundreds
of them -- from January 1998 to February 2004. So far this year, there
have been only 14 days with sunspots. The sun is more spot-free now
than it was last year when scientists thought solar action had hit
bottom.
Thomas Bogdan, director of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in
Boulder, Colo., said solar activity should be increasing "anytime now."
Others think this may be a replay of 1913 or the even deeper
solar ditch of 200 years ago, the Dalton Minimum. The deepest ditch of
all was in the 1600s. A deep minimum probably drops global temperatures
temporarily about one-tenth of a degree Celsius, not nearly enough to
make up for global warming, said Tom Woods of the University of
Colorado's atmospheric and space physics lab. Generally the
heating effect from manmade greenhouse gases is 13 times greater than
the variations from solar activity, said Ralph Cicerone, president of
the National Academy of Sciences and an expert in atmospheric sciences.
Heavy solar radiation slows down electrons and creates radio
waves that interfere with the frequencies used by GPS receivers. So
during high solar activity peaks, GPS tracking can be off by nearly a
football field because of the distortion from receivers to satellites,
NOAA's Bogdan said. But during solar minimums like the current one, GPS
is accurate to within a foot or so, he said.
The sun's shrinking of
Earth's atmosphere reduces the physical drag on satellites and space
junk, keeping both the good and the bad in orbit, Hathaway said.
WEBSITES OF INTEREST
If you think you have a lot of equipment in your shack check out NE7X at:
http://www.ne7x.com/New_Shack_2008.htm
An interesting weather tracking site:
http://users.accesscomm.ca/saskweather/station.htm
Problems like this drive can you nuts. Why antennas sometimes don't work. Go to:
http://home.pacbell.net/dredmo1/acorns/acorns.wmv
Green
Statement 2009: No trees were sacrificed in the dissemination of this
newsletter; we regret that a large number of electrons were
inconvenienced.
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Regina Amateur Radio Assoc.
(VE5LAT) Box 153 Station Main
Regina, Sask. S4P 2Z6