Saturn’s Moon, Daphnis, And Saturn’s Rings.

on Nov. 28, 2013, comet ISON will fly through the sun’s atmosphere little more than a million km from the stellar surface. If the comet survives without breaking up it could emerge glowing as brightly as the Moon, visible near the sun in broad daylight.

Kindly share this, so that no one could miss that event!

Jupiter

Catching Up: Weather is weird... TWWN continues... 80 Meter woes...

-=> Weather is just plain odd around here. We’re supposed to get up to 7 inches of snow, but nothing so far. Here in town it’s actually pretty nice

Out in the country it’s a different story. Not snowing, but 30+ MPH winds are whipping the snow we do have into near blizzard like conditions in some areas. Went down to Stockbridge to my favorite coffee shop, Mud Creek, and if I hadn’t been driving the Jeep I don’t think I would have made it. Was bucking drifts a foot or more deep in some areas, and visibility was down to just a few feet in places.

Problem with the Jeep is I get overconfident. I was bashing along around 40 mph in four wheel drive, and nearly lost it when I nailed a 2 foot deep drift. Wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d been driving slow, but at 40 the front end wiped out and I nearly went sideways before I got it straightened out again. Needless to say, I slowed down a bit after that.

So, snow storms today, and by Thursday it’s supposed to be 40 degrees and raining.

Sigh…

Noticed they got the street dug up just down the road from the house here. Another water main break. Must be the fifth one we’ve had in town in the last two months. Feel sorry for the water utility guys. And I stocked up on bottled water just in case…

-=> Work on The World’s Worst Novel continues unabated. I’ve been having way too much fun with this thing. It’s an SF novel in the worst sense of the word, harking back to the old space opera days with ridiculous space battles, paying very little attention to whether or not the ‘science’ bears any relationship to actual physics. It’s also gotten very, very dirty. Well, not by modern standards. Compared to modern fiction it’s actually pretty mild, but for me… I keep wondering where this stuff comes from.

Curiously, I just realized that almost all of the main characters are female. The protagonist is female, her spouse is female, almost all the heads of government are female… Not sure why. Didn’t do it deliberately. 

-=> Amateur Radio stuff… I have, alas, been doing very little of late except listening. I’ve discovered that my Comet vertical antenna is total crap below about 20 meters or so, which is understandable when you look at how the thing is built. Most of the energy going into the thing, especially at lower frequencies, is never getting into the air. Frankly, it’s surprising I can get a decent SWR at all with the thing on the lower bands. I ran some generic calculations and if I got the formulas right (which I probably didn’t) if I put 200 watts into the thing down at 3.8 mHz I’m lucky if I get 20 out of it.

Weather has been so nasty I’ve never even tried to get the dipole up. For one thing, mounting it is going to be a problem. I’m going to have to put up some kind of mast to try to get the center of the thing up to around 35 feet, and then it’s going to have to be configured as an inverted V because there’s nothing I can hook the ends to.

I picked up a Gap Titan multi band vertical that I’m going to give a try. It’s far more efficient than the Comet and even better, I can finally use my big amplifier with it. It’s rated to handle 1,500 watts so I can finally fire up the Ameritron. If it works, that is. Considering Ameritron’s reputation, you never know what’s going to happen. I talked to a guy who used to sell the things and they’d go through every one before they sent it out because they were having a 25% failure rate straight form the factory. I looked it over carefully when I put it together and didn’t see any obvious issues, and it does come up in standby mode, but until I actually try using it, whether it’ll work or not is anyones guess.

From what I’ve been hearing, the Titan has some issues when it comes to tuning it to work on the various bands. One fellow I talked to told me he never could get the thing down to a reasonable SWR on 80 meters. Other people tell me they had no problems at all. So we’ll see. SWR doesn’t bother me that much. I’ve got a massive Palstar auto tuner that can handle up to 2,000 watts output to hang behind the Ameritron.

I really wish now that I’d spent a little bit more and gone for the solid state amplifier rather than the tube based one. The solid state amps are a lot easier to work with. They’re pretty much plug and play, just turn them on, select the band you want, and go. Tube amps are fussy, requiring a lot of fiddling whenever you change bands, even changing frequencies. It’s easy to mess them up and end up blowing a $300 tube. Still, it was almost a grand cheaper than the solid state amp I was looking at, so we’ll see.

Comet PanSTARRS

Gorgeous picture of Comet PanSTARRS taken by Carl Gruber on March 2, 2013 at a mountain lookout in Melbourne.

Cometary Globules

General Ham: CW Procedures/Abbreviations

Have I mentioned that the General Ham License Manual has a ton more information than the Technician manual?  If I haven’t already, it’s true.  It’s awesome.

So it’s a lot of work to spell out the full text of all words and phrases, so telegraphers developed an extensive set of abbreviations and procedural signals called prosigns.  These are two letters sent together as a single character as indicated by an overbar.   So the prosign  AR  is used to indicated “End of Message”.

And then there are abbreviations to shorten common words such as “AND” is “ES” and “GOING” is “GG” and “WEATHER” is “WX”.

Calling CQ on CW is about the same as on phone/voice.  "DE" is an abbreviation used in place of “form” and the procedural signal K replaces “over”:

CQ CQ CQ DE W0TTV W0TTV W0TTV K

A response might look like the following:

W0TTV DE W1AW W1AW W1AW K

There’s no need to send the CQing station’s call more than once unless there’s interferences or the signal is weak.  When signals are strong and clear, those responding to CQ may even just send their call once or twice.

Good idea is also to respond at the speed of the calling station but if you’re uncomfortable receiving at that speed, send the Q signal “QRS” (send slower) before the final K.  Or if you want to go faster, QRQ.

Also adjust your transmitting frequency so that your signals is “zero beat” with the other signal so that you will be on the same frequency.  This means the two signals produce the same audio tone in a receiver.  Check the radio’s operating manual for instructions on how to zero beat another signal.

And once you’re in contact with another station, the prosign KN is used instead of K to prevent other stations from breaking in during the contact.  It means “Only the station with whom I am in contact should respond”.  When asked if you are ready to receive, “QRV” means “I’m ready to copy.”  After receiving the message, “QSL” means  "I acknowledge receipt.“

Then when it’s time to end the QSO, the prosign SK is used to let any listener know that the contact is completed: W1AW DE W0TTV SK and if you’re going off the air, add CL for closing station.

Phew!

@atdiy/@tymkrs

Spacex CRS-10

Just some eye candy from the Hubble Space Telescope.  One of the great scientific achievements of our time.