Ham Radio Fun !!

Firecracker Hamfest
Salisbury, North Carolina
Sponsored by
( The Rowan Amateur Radio Society )

I wondered why they called this the "Fire Cracker" Hamfest ..

Now I know !!

Have you ever been to hamfest in North Carolina in July ?

The two words that describe it best are ....

HEAT & HUMIDITY 

I went with my buddies K4MK / Kent and W4RKO / Tom

and we had a great time .... thanks for the invite guys!!

Get

" Radio-Active "

Support your local Hamfest

73 de N4LA

High Winds on the 4th of July !!

July 4th Storms .. I'm lucky this time !

Storms blew in Monday evening and almost cost me a roof.

We had little rain ... But what we did have was straight line winds

reaching in excess of 60 mph just before the approaching storm.

In the picture above ... the 80 ft Poplar tree is now 60 ft !!

Here you can see the top 20 ft of the tall poplar tree

now resting on the ground. 

It sounded like Fire crackers 

exploding when it began to fall !!

This final picture was taken from my front deck... 

as you can see, 

these tree limbs are much too large 

to simply drag away ... 

The limbs missed my heat/air unit by 3 ft... 

and my roof by 10 ft ..

Fortunately there was no property or antenna damage

just a lot of scattered debris.

Guess today was my lucky day, 

since I narrowly avoided a call to

my insurance agent.

But

I'll have to fire up the chainsaw ...

to clean up this mess !!

73 de N4LA

Field Day 2011 ... My Local Club

Randolph Amateur Radio Club

Asheboro, NC

73 de NC4ZO

3A   NC

IOTA (NA-112) pics / AKA... Emerald Isle, NC

NA-112 ... Activation / Vacation is complete

My 2011 beach vacation is in the record books now. 

As usual nothing ever goes as planned...

and as usual, Murphy's Law  was in effect !!

Radio ops looked good on the first day...

as I put 22 contacts in the log.

Contacts included ... 

S52 .. F6 .. GW4 .. I5

R7 .. XE3 .. M6 .. HB9

QRN was a little high at S4, but no real concern.

When I turned on the FT-857D for the 2nd day 

things had changed for the worse.

My Static level was now S7 to S9 at all times of the day

and the NB on the radio wouldn't work at all on the QRN

I tried every thing I could possibly think of

 to cure the noise problem ... but nothing worked.

I ended up with only 12 more contacts during the week.

for a grand total of 34 contacts.

I never had the chance to operate from the beach ...

So I'm not sure if that would have helped with the QRN

The WX wasn't the best either

 as we had severe thunderstorms on most evenings.

Which is when I had most of my free time to operate.

Forest Fire smoke was also a problem on this trip.

There was a 21,000 acre fire just down the coast in Pender county 

that created lots of smoke in the area, 

depending on the wind direction of course.

At times it was very unpleasant to even be outside.

We ended up leaving for home on Friday morning

so my apologies to those that didn't make it into the log.

73 de N4LA

My IOTA Activation... coming soon

Bogue Banks, North Carolina

IOTA ( NA-112 )

June 19 -25

I will be active from Bogue Banks for one week.

( June 19th thru 25th )

QTH will be Emerald Isle, NC

This will be a part time effort ... with no set schedule.

I will operate only when I have some free time

Bands of operation ...10/12/15/17/20/40 ... SSB Only

Eqpt ... 

Yaesu FT-857D @ 100 watts

A123 battery pack for beach ops

Antennas ...  

Par End Fedz from ( LNR Precision )

Shock Cord Vertical from ( Buddipole )

Bogue Banks form a 21-mile (34 km) barrier island off the mainland of North Carolina inCarteret County.

 The island separated from the mainland by Bogue Sound runs east to west, with the ocean beaches facing due south.

I will operate primarily from the beach house ...

with the possibility of actual oceanside Beach ops if time permits.

QSL Direct or LOTW Only !!

For Bogue Banks info

& 

Real time spots for NA-112

click on the link below

RSGB IOTA Official Website

& 

Wikipedia / Bogue Banks Info

73 de N4LA

Thank You

We Will Never Forget !

Here we go again !!

M-Class Flares - Active Sunspot 1226 has a Beta-Gamma magnetic configuration and is capable of producing M-Class flares. An M1.1 Solar Flare took place on Saturday and a second M-Class flare has just took place early on Sunday. Region 1226 is being trailed by an additional sunspot group which has just rotated into view on the southeast limb. Solar activity is increasing and the Solar Flux is back above 100.

How do I Monitor Solar conditions ?

I use

IonoProbe 1.38 

IonoProbe is a 32-bit Windows application that lives in the System Tray and monitors the space weather parameters essential for HF radio. The list of parameters includes SSN/SFI, Ap/Kp, X-ray/Proton flux, and Auroral activity. IonoProbe downloads near-real time satellite and ground station data, stores information for future use and displays it in a user-friendly way.

Time-critical parameters, such as X-ray flux, proton flux and auroral index, are updated every 15 minutes. An alarm can be set up to notify you of a storm within a few minutes after its start. 

Space weather monitor for Amateur Radio 

For more info or to download the Ionoprobe software 

click on the link below

IonoProbe 1.38

73 de N4LA