Category: Cool Links

Is HF actually that dead?

I found a ridiculous article from my Google News feed about the upcoming massive Solar Maelstrom which could definitely probably affect the entire electrical grid and cause headaches on 14 March.

Or is it 18 March? …the article is confused.

There is a much more reputable site for solar weather – http://spaceweather.com/

Pi day, 14 March is indeed the correct date. I also favor http://solarham.net/ for it’s awesome listing and displays of solar weather data, like this pretty solar wind gif that…shows the solar wind stuff (I don’t know my solar weather jargon…).

Wow…it’s really not that bad.

So yea, that article was just another clickbait that doesn’t actually know wtf’s going on. Kinda like the deorbiting Chinese space station that has a non-zero chance of landing on your Minivan…

[UPDATE: See? Calm down news media.]

A little farther down the page is some news we hams are too familiar with: a completely naked sun, devoid of a single sunspot.

🙁

Could you find any dark cores? Answer: No. The last time the sun was blank more than 50% of the time was in 2009, near the end of the deepest Solar Minimum of the Space Age. Now the sun is entering a new Solar Minimum, and it is shaping up to be even deeper than before.

-Spaceweather.com

Could this be the worst news for ham radio? Will the bands be forever dead?!

Well, relative to the early 2000s, yea. But to me, absolutely not. I got into ham radio in 2007 when we were at the dead bottom of that solar cycle. I annotated the sunspot number progression chart with my history in amateur radio:

Propagation isn’t so bad when you don’t actually know it’s been the worst in a few decades…

And believe it or not, those years between 2007 and 2010 were some of the best times I had on HF. I was contesting, DXing, building antennas, the whole shebang.

2009 was when I was getting into YouTubing my adventure – smack dab at the bottom of the cycle, and from 2007 to 2011 was some of my peak enjoyment of HF before heading to college. Here’s the playlist to prove it.

So, sure ~some~ of the bands are dead, but it’s not all that bad. There is a ton of fun to be had on ham radio, even on HF.

 

 

N8RMA 2018 State of Amateur Radio Survey

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc2gJ0xG_2EeFAgInFRM0NYi4eW93IBqlBbpBAB2Hx6zkYPNw/viewform

Enough said, go take the survey! 

ok I’ll say more.

Last year some dude in Michigan (literally, that’s what he called himself) started a survey to get some demographic information on the state of amateur radio, just because he thought it would be cool to know things like…

  • What are the most popular bands and modes?
  • What are hams’ favorite activities?
  • How old are ham radio operators?
  • Why did hams get involved in amateur radio in the first place?
  • What do you think are the biggest issues and roadblocks in ham radio?
  • Are governing and lobbying bodies doing a good job? What should they do better?

The 2017 survey got 668 unique respondents and provided a rather unsurprising birds-eye view of the hobby:

  1. 2m is a favorite band
  2. Hams like direct QSLs best
  3. And only 12% of respondants are under the age of 35.
  4. #wearethe12%

It’s a little surprising that the IARU or other lobbying organizations like the ARRL don’t seem to spearhead massive demographic surveys, considering the FCC and other regulatory bodies tend to not have a . I’ve heard in the past a lot of money has been spent trying to determine the most unbiased way of generating surveys but never got around to it, or maybe they found a way and it wasn’t targeted to my (millennial) demographic? Who knows.

But then came N8RMA!

Many thanks to Dustin for putting the survey together and publishing the results last year. Here’s to looking forward to some awesome new data!

For those concerned about their personally identifiable information (call sign) going on the internet:

Privacy Policy: Any information provided will only be used, by me, on the survey results.This response data will not be given or sold to anyone, ever. I might not be GDPR compliant (heh heh) but as I stated, just for me. All the demographic stuff is optional, it’s a good baseline but not needed. I’m not affiliated with a marketing company or any ham radio lobby or company, just a dude in Michigan. Plus you know who I am so you can hunt me down. 🙂

-N8RMA

So although “callsign” is a required field, you don’t actually have to put your callsign…just put N/A or something if you would like to remain anonymous.

Go take the survey!

See the reddit discussion here.

Ham Radio Dominating Groups.io…Good!

Groups.io is the internet’s replacement to Yahoo Groups, and it’s been a long time coming. Ham radio is notorious for having a Yahoo Group for just about every contest, radio, antenna, CW paddle, and footswitch, but as a user and admin it’s a pain to manage and it’s reputation tarnished due to Yahoo’s major cybersecurity problems (e.g. they leaked users’ data like a sieve and the groups always got a metric butt-ton of spam).

I was looking through some of the public groups on Groups.io, and I noticed there is a ludicrous number of ham radio groups on there already! Out of almost 100,000 groups, 10 out of the top 40 are ham radio groups! I joined a whole bunch, and now my email is exploding…oops.

Softrock40 is in 4th place with 8,496 members on Groups.io, behind IBM, an Equine health research interest group(?), and a New England Jewish community (not including the groups.io update list, which is a default subscription). Not bad!

Not bad. Props to Callum (DXCommander on Youtube) for egging everyone to migrate. Hopefully this blogette will persuade your group to get there too! (looking at you, anyone running a GNU Python Powered Mailman Bulletin Board Mailing list coughAMSAT-BBcoughcoughAPRS-SIGcough)