[KL7AA] The April 4th AARC Meeting Speaker

[David Heimke]

Many of you are aware that we are at the peak of the solar year's
propagation as it is spring equinox, and we are also just after the peak of
the 11 year solar cycle.  10 meters has been open for quite some time and
now is the time to really enjoy propagation on the upper HF bands.  This
weekend is the CQ WPX worldwide SSB contest so it will be hopefully quite
busy with exotic DX amongst other signals.

 

Perfect timing for this month's speaker, longtime Alaskan Electrical
Engineer Whitham Reeve is going to speak on the e-CALLISTO Solar
Spectrometer Network.  Please join us at 7pm at the normal APU campus
meeting place.

 

A brief summary:

  

e-CALLISTO Solar Spectrometer Network

 

e-CALLISTO is a worldwide network of frequency-agile solar spectrometers.
e-CALLISTO is an acronym for extended Compact Astronomical Low-cost
Low-frequency Instrument for Spectroscopy and Transportable Observatory.
Callisto is the name of one of Jupiter's larger moons, and the name also is
found in Greek mythology - a nymph of Artemis. 

 

The receiver instrument itself is called CALLISTO. CALLISTO was designed by
Christian Monstein at ETH Zurich. CALLISTO can be used in a basic system
consisting of the receiver, a linear polarized antenna system and
control/logging software. A more advanced system includes a tower-mounted
preamplifier or low noise amplifier, additional antennas and a focal plane
unit (FPU) with antenna polarization switching and noise calibration
capabilities. The receiver and associated software can be setup for linear,
right-hand circular polarization (RHCP) or left-hand circular polarization
(LHCP) but one receiver is required for each polarization.

 

You can find more information on Whit's website at www.reeve.com.