We were hit with two coronal mass ejections from the sun.

Some of you may have been treated to a display of northern lights.

In my case, I went out to my ham shack and lit up my equipment to find no activity on bands that are normally teeming with activity. The lone exception was a very weak station in Chile on the 10 meter band.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

But...But...But.... if the gov. will raise our taxes, they can control the weather. The sun has nothing to do with it. (where's the sarcasm thingy)

One day we will establish colonies on the sun.

Sounds like what fugged up our internet Saturday and Sunday. But maybe not.

The Hell you say!

That's just not going to happen. Might tip it over.....

With Starlink I had great service right through about 8" of snow. I was impressed and concerned for nothing.

Yep, QRNancy. Looking forward to some 10m AM with the Viking II and the 75a4. Weekend before last had a great couple hour QSO on 7293 AM with UT, AZ, and CA guys. Hopefully this will be a good cycle! Kb7loq

1960 dream station!

I'm so old that I remember how the Viking II VFO included 11 meters.

Yes, the noise level was pretty bad. I did check into the Beehive Utah Net on 40 meters a couple of days ago, and it was tough sledding. 30-10 were just dead.

I suppose conditions may be more normal today.

This is proof of Global Warming.... Global Warming is real !

I root for solar flares and sunspots to take this high tech mess were in, out on a daily basis.Im ready to go back to riding horses,and watch corporate america crash and burn.Yall may call this crap progress,I call it the beginning of the end..... have a nice day out there and happy hunting amigos, I'm headed for the hills!

You ought to get a copy of the novel One Second After, by William Forstchen. It has to do with what happens when a large EMP strikes high above the United States. Everything electric is fried. Read that novel and you might not be quite so enthusiastic about wanting to "head for the hills."

just suggesting.

L.W.

Well, now we know what will be blamed for any coming blackout.

At least conservative radical domestic terrorists like the MAGA nuts won't be blamed.

That or Q. Something big was going to happen!

There was a massive coronal ejection in 1859, called The Carrington Event. There wasn't much electricity in use then, but it fried telegraph stations around the world. We get one that massive today, society will collapse. No electricity. No trucks to transport groceries. We will go back to Life In 1840, only worse.

Yes, read One Second After.

Sure your are....lol

Denton,

When and what freq. is the Beehive net?

FB in the Viking vfo! I love using the old gear. Will be on the vintage ssb net tonight at 8pm on 3895. Will be using an ht37/sx115 and an sb220 amp. Lots of old gear represented on the net.

Amongst the vintage Collins radio collectors there's a story that the military has warehoused analog tube radio gear to use in case of an emp. The military used among others Collins transceivers and amplifiers in Vietnam to run phone patches so the troops could talk to family back in the US.

The Collins R390a tube type receiver was top notch and still holds its own in most aspects compared to the modern sdr radios.

Hank Johnson would say it's safe, as long as we go at night.

Well, it WOULD be cooler than Arizona anyway.

One Second After, was well done. Reading it was strange because I live close to the area it was written about....

Do any of the other Hams here work 160 Meters? The antenna analyzer says my wire is resonate on 1900 but I have not heard another station in probably a year???

That literally made me laugh. Good one….😂👍🏼

We’ll have to go at night

Me too. It is set in Black Mountain. I am 35 miles away on the other side of Asheville.

Lovin' my Starlink. Screw ye Telalaska.

7272 KHz, daily at 1230 Mountain. It's the place to go if you have formal message traffic.

We will undoubtedly have another Carrington level solar event. It is just a matter of time.

Without hardening, it will probably take out a large share of the electric grid. Internet probably won't survive. People who know how to do for themselves will probably be less affected, but look for major shortages of food and medicine.

It's less dramatic than a nuclear EMP, since it probably won't affect vehicle electronics, but fuel will quickly become a problem.

Several years ago, I saw an estimate that for $2 billion we could harden the electric grid. That seems like cheap insurance to me.

Thanks.

Looks like we got zapped again. Bands above 40 meters were nearly vacant at a time that they should have been packed.

OTOH, I did get a confirmation for a contact with a Ukrainian ham stationed in Antarctica, which was nice to get.

Denton were you able to make that contact on single side band voice??? I have yet to make a contact in Antarctica. Big points that the ham there was Ukrainian.

I was using FT8. It's remarkable for weak signal work.

My station is fairly modest, just 100 watts and a simple antenna, so FT8 makes it possible to work stations that I otherwise could not.

But I've heard that FT8 isn't "real" ham radio....

There are people in our local club that are overjoyed with FT8.. They are filling up their log books with areas they didn't think they would ever get....

I'm a rag chewer. I got into radio to have conversations with interesting people I never would have "met" any other way. Everybody is different and that's a good thing. Personally I'd rather watch paint dry than have my computer talk to someone else's . I'm glad FT8 is generally in band space separate from voice operating areas.

I have heard complaints that Morse code operators have abandoned ship to work FT8 instead.

Yes, I think we have fewer and fewer people using Morse. For weak signal work, I understand that PSK31 is about as good as Morse, but a lot easier. There was a time that I could do 25 WPM, but have left it alone for so long that I could probably do half that now... on a good day.

If you're chasing DX, I think FT8 and SSB or CW contacts tend to be very similar in content: callsign, signal report, 73. So from a social standpoint I don't think they are much different. Well, except that on FT8 you can see who is working who on the whole FT8 segment of the band. It's kind of neat to see a guy in Wisconsin working a guy in Ukraine, a guy in Texas working a guy in Venezuela, etc., all at once. The other neat thing about FT8 is that it constantly gives you brutally honest feedback about how your system is performing, since you get and give a true signal report in each contact.

Now that I'm back on the air, my next project is getting set up for Parks On The Air. Just waiting for a little bit of antenna hardware to land in my mailbox. That will probably be mixed FT8 and SSB.

It's all about having some fun, and doing some good in the world.

It would have been cheap indeed. I read a while back that there was actually solar flare/CME last year on the side of the sun opposite to our Earth that was much stronger than the Carrington event. If it had been on our side, it would've been beyond a disaster.
Fact is, our civilization would not survive a CME of Carrington magnitude. Without a power grid and internet, the world economy would cease to exist instantly. All commerce outside of the local farmer's market would grind to a rapid halt. Supply chains wouldnt just be slow, they'd be gone. So it wouldn't just be fuel in short supply... also all food except locally grown/sourced, virtually all medicines, manufactured clothing, building materials. Pretty grim prognosis, when you think about it.

Yes, Doc, a massive solar flair would cause billions of deaths world wide.

Time to lock and load, fire up the wood stove, and get out the 5 gallon buckets of nitrogen packed corn and wheat, and your hand-cranked grain grinder. Do y'all have a source of water?