[Lowfer] Beacon R

[john wright]

I had been running QRSS-50 until tonight, but weather now threatens.  T-storms will be in this region until Tuesday Night.  Therefore, I've shut R down, disconnected the loading coil and grounded the antenna.

This will give me a chance to fiddle with the antenna itself when a T-storm isn't overhead, and I'm going to try to improve things.  This may be an effort in vain because I'm still stuck with transmitting into a hillside no matter what I do!  I should be back up, for better or for worse, by Wednesday.

I was reading Alan Gale's column in the current (March 2009) LOWDOWN.  He noted that "...it still feels very much like we are stuck right down at Solar Minimum..."   Indeed, we are!  I wonder if we are going into a Maunder-type prolonged minimum. 
 I think I told you that I do
 astronomy, and my solar telescope spar
has a Fabre'-Perot H-alpha instrument for observing/photographing the chromosphere, a
white light photospheric camera and a spectroheliograph that is 95%
complete (with a view to calcium line scanning but also - maybe - for
the corona green emission line on very blue clear days).  Maybe #24 will take off, but this sure looks like a very weak start.  If it doesn't develop, well that's good for LF DX, but we ought to review our winter wardrobes!  A critical test of the carbon dioxide global warming hypothesis may be in the making.  What we are seeing is mostly a monotonous solar disk with an occasional cycle 23 sunspot pair showing up near the Sun's equator.  Cycle 24 spots have been few and quite weak.  A few high latitude cycle 24 spots have shown up, tiny pairs that went "poof" in a day or so.  But there have been some nice prominences, though not especially impressive ones.  

The photo shows a neighbor's kid, who did a science fair project with my equipment.  The ridge that I mentioned is to the right in that photo, and the street becomes very steep in places.  I'm also hemmed in by powerlines and trees.   Maybe I should buy a plot of land on a hilltop - transmit somewhere more acceptable!