[Elecraft] Another dumb one- Sunspot cycle

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

I agree, Dan. I was in the National Guard back then and one day I was in the
Army testing an AN/PRC-6 "walkie talkie" that shared the Amateur six meter
band. It ran about 50 mw output, A.M. phone I think. As I was listening I
heard a Ham calling CQ from over 1,000 miles away. I answered using my Ham
call and we went on to have a nice QSO. Note this was with about 50 mw A.M.
(equal to maybe 5 or 10 mW SSB) into a short whip on a "walkie talkie". 

Still, there is a world to discover during the sunspot "down" cycle. 

Lots of ops will sigh and resign themselves to VHF or local contacts, never
scanning the "dead" bands near the MUF or expecting the unexpected on any
band. It's their loss. 

We're simply moving into a different time on the HF bands. Not less
interesting if you're interested in "radio" in general. But different. 

And there is still a lot we do NOT know about propagation. All the detailed
computer models make people feel like we know it all. All we know is what we
can predict. There is still a world of unpredictability. When I was
servicing electronics on large ocean going ships, one radio officer showed
me his logs about the night in the middle of the Pacific Ocean they searched
for a lifeboat after a sinking. He had been knocked out of his bunk by the
"auto-alarm" that monitors the 500 kHz distress frequency. That happened all
the time because of lightning and other QRN fooling the simple detection
system. This time, when he sleepily tuned in 500 kHz he heard the signal
that made his skin tingle and both eyes snap full open. SOS SOS SOS followed
by a ship's call sign. It was a ship sinking and the crew had already taken
to the lifeboats. He was hearing a hand-cranked lifeboat radio bleating out
it's automatic call. He summoned his Captain and soon they were following
the signal on their radio direction finder. 

Suddenly the direction changed rapidly, meaning they had just gone past the
lifeboat and they started a search pattern. They cris-crossed that area of
the sea for hours trying to find that lifeboat before the signal finally
faded out. A few hours later the radio officer had his answer. There had
been a sinking that night of the ship whose call sign they copied at exactly
that time. The crew had been rescued from the lifeboat. Only it was in the
Mediterranean Sea halfway around the world. There is no way at all that it
is possible for a signal at 500 kHz to overcome the absorption in daylight
and travel to the "dark" side of the planet to put in a strong enough signal
to set off the auto alarm and to allow the RDF to operate, but it clearly
did. The call signs matched those they had chased through the darkness.

There is a *lot* we don't know about radio propagation yet, and after 50+
years of pounding brass and reading everything I can find on the subject, I
know there is far, far more that I personally haven't learned yet.

The downside of the sunspot cycle is simply another opportunity to learn
about the minimum period. 

I work with computer modeling in many areas every day, from valuating Real
Estate to tinkering with electronic circuits. They are wonderful tools. But
every day I meet people who think we "understand" what is going on because
it's been modeled. Punch in the numbers and you "know" the answer. I remind
them that we have modeled only that which we *do* understand, and it might
all be wrong.

But we'll only know when we're wrong if there are curious ops who will go
looking for the anomalies instead of using the predictions as "fact" and
simply ignoring all the times they're not right.  

Ron AC7AC 



-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of dlajr at bellsouth.net
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 5:56 PM
To: Stuart Rohre; Mike Morrow; elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: Re: [Elecraft] Another dumb one- Sunspot cycle


In 1957, I was ten years old, and I built my first kit (with the help of my
father).  It was a Space Spanner.  I received transmissions of all sorts,
and several modes, from all over the world using a wire out my bedroom
window that ran to an insulator I had nailed into the eave of an
outbuilding.  It was magic, and it started me on a journey that I am still
travelling today.  My father became so enthused that he became licensed in
1958, and helped me to get licensed in 1959.

Then, as now, I lived in Greer, South Carolina.  Nobody alive in the south
at that time had ever seen an aurora.  I can remember in the fall of 1957,
and the winter of 1957-1958, the sky would glow a pinkish-orange almost
every night.  It looked as though we were living inside of a neon tube!
Some nights it was bright enough to read by. People were running crazy in
the streets saying that the world was coming to an end.

Even in 1959, the cycle was so potent that I would come home from school and
work the U.S. on 80 meters with a one watt tube transmitter that I had
ordered from the back of a magazine.

If there is such a thing as sun spot cycle nostalgia, 1957 would get my
vote!

Dan Allen
KB4ZVM
K2 S/N 1757