DXERS UNLIMITED
MID-WEEK EDITION
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2001
By Arnie Coro CO2KK
Send your comments, questions and ideas to: arnie@radiohc.org
Hi amigos, welcome to the mid-week edition of your favorite
listener-oriented radio hobby show... I am Arnie Coro, your friend here in
Havana, my amateur radio callsign is CO2KK, and that's just in case you come
across my ham radio station when I am on the air. Here are the headlines...
Dxers Unlimited on the cover of Radio Kurier, April 15, 2001
Listen in a few minutes to a Dxers Unlimited special report about the second-largest solar flare of cycle 23, a super-powerful X14, that erupted Sunday from sunspot region 9415. As I was at home, and was listening to short wave, I will be able to bring you in this special report some first-hand information on how the radiation storm that followed wiped out all the short wave bands in a few seconds, when the D layer ionization reached very high values, increasing ionospheric absorption to levels that made HF communications impossible...
Item two: A review of SPRATs Spring issue... SPRAT is the G QRP CLUB magazine, a journal that is edited by the very enthusiastic British QRP, or low power amateurs club. SPRAT is usually loaded with a wealth of very well-written technical articles, plus some really excellent projects, and this number is no exception...
Item three: Using telephone company dropdown twin wire pair for dipole antennas may prove to be a very low-cost solution when you want to install a portable or emergency system. Measurements here show that the typical polyethylene insulated drop twin wire line that goes from the telephone pole's terminal box to your house has an impedance of very near 100 ohms at 7 megaHertz.... making it a very convenient and low-cost downlead. I am using it here at CO2KK on a 44 footer dipole with excellent results...
Stay tuned for this and maybe a little more all radio-hobby related information coming to you from Havana; my sound engineer and producer Margarita Delgado, and at the transmitter site, taking loving care of our 9550 kiloHertz 100 kiloWatt rig that we use for the 0530 broadcast of Dxers Unlimited is Radio Havana Cuba's veteran Dictinio Diaz... I am Arnie Coro, back with you in a few seconds.
You are listening to Dxers Unlimiteds mid week edition, send your signal reports and comments to arnie@radiohc.org, and here now, as promised, is Dxers Unlimited's special report on SOLAR FLARE X14 of APRIL 15th, 2001:
The second-largest solar flare this solar cycle, a class X14 x-ray flare, was observed departing active sunspot Region 9415 April 15 at 13:49 UTC. Region 9415 will be known from now on as one of the super-power active sunspot regions of solar cycle 23. A radio blackout in the sunlit hemisphere followed.
Several Cuban radio amateurs with whom I was having an island-wide roundtable on the 40 meter band told me later that my signals just disappeared when the x-ray and ultraviolet radiation storm impacted upon the upper atmosphere, starting phase one of the impact that a major flare has on radio communications.
Phase two, the following geomagnetic storm, will probably be in progress by the time you are picking up this edition of Dxers Unlimited or maybe later. Solar active region 9415 has now rotated beyond the west limb of the Sun. The activity and morphological structure of this region will undoubtedly be the subject of intense study and scientific interest for years to come, as it had a very peculiar magnetic configuration of the sunspot group, which is very rarely seen, and which was probably what caused such major flare activity.
Well, we were certainly lucky once again amigos, having this region produce such an intense solar x-ray flare when very near to the west limb of the Sun. Had it occurred when region 9415 was right at the center of the solar disk, in a geoeffective position... then we might have seen many world wide telecommunications service providers running crazily to try to restore satellite based systems... And, we had the huge flare from region 9393, the X22 one -- the most powerful X ray solar flare ever recorded -- happening when region 9393 was not in a geoeffective position, and now the also huge X14 flare from 9393 occurs when that region was almost turning around... Well, I certainly should say that Planet Earth was twice lucky during this active phase of the solar cycle... Had either of those two flares happened from a group of sunspots that were looking right at the Earth, we would certainly still be assessing the damages to satellites, power distribution systems and submarine cables!!!
More comments about the latest X14 flare, which we had the opportunity to observe right as it was developing. This event was associated with exceptionally loud radio bursts. My ten meter band receiver was hitting S9 on the meter picking up the solar noise bursts. The flare also also produced a prompt and spectrally hard proton event in the near-Earth space environment. Although this increased radiation poses no threat to humans on the surface of the Earth, according to space experts, astronauts may have been required to take radiation avoidance measures.
Spacecraft may also experience increased incidences of anomalous events such as single event upsets, phantom commands, star-tracker problems, etc. Space weather analysts are currently looking at the x-ray data from this flare. It is possible this flare (which at an X14 level would probably rank among the top 4 of the largest x-ray flares in recorded history) may have even been larger than that. There is a rumor floating around the professional community that suggests this flare may have been even larger than the estimated X22 flare earlier this month from departed active Region 9393. Once all of the x-ray data has been fully analyzed, it will be more possible to determine quantitatively where this flare ranks in history.
This major flare may have produced a coronal mass ejection that could conceivably result in a minor impact on geomagnetic and auroral activity on or near 18 April, as I said before. The very poor location of the flare on the west limb of the Sun, at a non-geoeffective position, probably has sent virtually all of the ejected mass far to the west of the Earth.
Now, another important announcement related to upcoming possible solar activity... Over the next several days, the remnants of old active Region 9393 (which was a naked-eye sunspot group responsible for the X22 largest x-ray flare of this solar cycle) are due to rotate back into view around the East limb of the Sun, but scientists are not expecting it to be as powerful as it was during the previous solar rotation.
You are listening to the mid-week edition of Dxers Unlimited, and yes our nice 40th Anniversary of Radio Havana Cuba QSL card is yours just by sending a signal report and comments about our programming to Arnie Coro, Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, Cuba, a postcard sent VIA AIR MAIL will be OK, or if you are already in Cyberspace just send me an e-mail to arnie@radiohc.org.
Now here is item two... SPRAT magazine's issue number 106 is a gem of a ham radio journal... George Dobbs, radio amateur G3RJV, wrote in his editorial that the issue contains two articles related to the fantastic PSK31 digital communications system, and he promotes a G QRP Club Kit Offer for a dedicated PSK31 transceiver that came out of the hands of Dick Pierce, G0BPS, a prolific writer of technical radio articles and an experimenter.
You can visit the G QRP homepage by going to www.gqrp.com, and learn more about this outstanding non-profit amateur radio organization, that not only publishes the SPRAT magazine, but that has also provided in the past help for Third World Amateurs to get on the air using simple yet highly effective equipment. If you become an overseas member of the G QRP club, then you will receive the four issues of SPRAT published every year, and you may ask George about the CD ROM that has the complete collection of SPRAT for the first 100 issues of the magazine -- a treasure chest of technical articles for any person interested in radio. And as always in SPRAT, there are some very interesting tips, like the one published on page 13, making reference to how the switch almost everywhere from the 10 base 2 ETHERNET connection using BNC connectors and RG58 U cable, by the 10 or 100 Base T using the RJ45 UTP connectors, has led to a tremendous number of BNC connectors and lengths of very useful RG58 cable to be availabe wherever there is a computer network installed...
SO, follow M5TIM's advice from SPRAT issue 106, and GO to your computer network manager and ask her or him about the BNC connectors and RG59 cable that were removed when the RJ45 UTP networking was installed... And follow my advice, too, and ask for broken down ETHERNET computer cards, as each of them has an excellent female BNC connector that is almost always like NEW!
Item three: Using telephone company twin lead drop wire -- the one that goes from the telephone pole to your house -- as an antenna downlead has proven to be a low-cost solution for balanced antenna systems. Ask the local phone repair person for some of it; they usually carry a brand new roll in their truck.... I am using it with my 44 footer or 13.4 meters long dipole, and it is working great.... Connected via a balun to the PI network antenna tuner, of course....
And now amigos, as always at the end of the show, here is Arnie Coro's HF propagation update and forecast. Solar activity is and will be low to moderate, and we may now be hitting the bottom low of this 27-day cycle. Solar flux Tuesday was just 123, a bit too low to make 10 meters be good, but this will change during the next few days, as I expect solar flux to reach the magic 150 figure by the end of the week or even earlier. There is a coronal hole that may give us a headache with yet another geomagnetic disturbance, also by the end of the week.
But the most important event is the highly probable geomagnetic disturbance that may be in progress by the time you are hearing this show, caused by the stream of charged particles that came from the coronal mass ejection caused by Sunday's super solar flare... Effective sunspot number is now 75...
And, for those of you who want to download a nice and easy-to-understand and use freeware propagation program from the Internet, go to www.qsl.net/w6elprop/ and install Sheldon Shallon's W6EL freeware program....
See you on the ham bands... remember 28.5 on 10, 21.305 on 15, 14.2 on 20 meters! It is always very nice to have a two-way QSO with Dxers Unlimited's listeners.
Arnie Coro CO2KK
Havana, Cuba
April 17, 2001
Postal address:
Arnie Coro, "Dxers Unlimited"
Radio Havana Cuba, Havana, CUBA
e-mail: arnie@radiohc.org
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