[Elecraft] OT:Sunspots

[Doug Person]

Glad to see there are few more observers out there. What I saw were two 
groups moving from north to south. Earlier there were three groups. But 
one group rotated out of view. I'm more of a deep sky observer and 
seeing the sun is a bit of a new experience. I bought a small solar 
scope to observe the eclipse. It was quite fascinating to see it happen 
where the sun appeared as large as an apple in the eyepiece.

Now that I have the little solar scope it's kind of interesting to see 
spots with my own eyes. I'm hoping this is, in fact, the beginning of 
cycle 25. The doldrums on 20 and 17 and a bit depressing.

Oddly enough, despite the low activity, I've been quite amazed at the 
number of good Q's I've made on 20 with the KX2.  Seem to get a lot of 
5x5 to 5x7 reports along with the comment "I can't believe you're only 
running 10 watts into a dipole". Of course the dipole is about 8300' ASL 
or about 50' above average terrain which is 8250' in elevation. That 
seems to be my QRP ace-in-the-hole.

73 - actually 72! -- Viva la QRP
Doug -- K0DXV

On 8/25/2017 6:17 AM, Tommy wrote:
>   Hi Fred,
>
>     Yup, I did the Sunspot counts daily for the AAVSO for 8 years a 
> long time ago. It was nice to see a few groups during the eclipse! The 
> "K" factor is an individual observer's factor that takes account of 
> experience of the observer. See: 
> https://www.aavso.org/dances-wolfs-short-history-sunspot-indices
>
> 73!
>
> Tom - KB2SMS
>
> KX2 #01927
>
>
> On 08/24/2017 11:11 PM, Fred Jensen wrote:
>> FWIW: Counting sunspots is a fairly arcane diversion.  The generally 
>> accepted [although by no means universally] is the Wolf Number, 
>> Wn=k(10g+s), where g denotes the number of groups [sunspots tend to 
>> come in groups, not always individually discernible], s denotes the 
>> number of individual spots, again somewhat hard to discern, and k is 
>> an "observatory factor", which appears to be much like Einstein's 
>> Cosmological Constant, and can take on any value that makes the data 
>> work as you wish it to.  If you see spots, and they are at high solar 
>> latitudes, this augurs well, they may be Cycle 25. If they're on the 
>> solar equator, probably just part of Cycle 24.
>>
>> All that said, right now there aren't very many G's or S's, and k 
>> could be zero for all we know.  I am currently at the point where 
>> living to the Cycle 25 maximum is an immediate goal. [:-)
>>
>> 73,
>>
>> Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
>> Sparks NV DM09dn
>> Washoe County
>>
>> On 8/24/2017 3:29 PM, Doug Person wrote:
>>> Sadly, I can only see 3 sunspots today. Down from 6 at the beginning 
>>> of the week.
>>>
>>> Doug -- K0DXV 
>>
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