Last night, on Mastodon, I came across a post that just made me say, “Wow!” It contained a link to a post by Susan Kaye Quinn, who is a speculative fiction author with a PhD in environmental engineering, who writes hopepunk climate fiction & solarpunk. The post on Quinn’s webiste includes the following video on how to make an eight-page “zine” from a single sheet of paper.

I love this idea so much that I now want to make my own ham radio zines. The first could be  something like, “Cool Things that Hams Do.” Off the top of my head, I have come up with the following eight pages:

• Title Page: Cool Things that Hams Do
• Build Radios
• Operate from parks and lighthouse and…
• Bounce signals off meteor trails
• Set up our own communications networks
• Talk to astronauts on the ISS (and other hams via satellites)
• Talk to each other using Morse Code
• Back Page – Want to get your own ham license?

Heres a start I made on the “Cool things hams do” zine, and here’s a template in Word format if you want to get started on your own.

Let’s make this a community effort

I”d love to make this a community effort. Here’s how you can help:

• If you can draw, perhaps you could make a drawing illustrating one or more points above.
• Come up with other ideas for the zine.
• Come up with ideas for other, more focused zines on particular topics.

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Field Day gets many mentions

This year, Field Day got more publicity this year than any year that I can remember. My Google Alerts was almost overflowing with links to stories in local newspapers. One of the stories that got mentioned a lot was “Colorado’s ham radio operators are ready for an emergency—just don’t call them amateurs.” It’s worth reading.

 

The good news about this point in the sunspot cycle is that the sun is more active, meaning that in general, band conditions are pretty good. Except when they’re not.

According to the NOAA:

There are several types of space weather that can impact HF radio communication. In a typical sequence of space weather storms, the first impacts are felt during the solar flare itself. The solar x-rays from the sun penetrate to the bottom of the ionosphere (to around 80 km). There the x-ray photons ionize the atmosphere and create an enhancement of the D layer of the ionosphere. This enhanced D-layer acts both as a reflector of radio waves at some frequencies and an absorber of waves at other frequencies. The Radio Blackout associated with solar flares occurs on the dayside region of Earth and is most intense when the sun is directly overhead.

This seems to be happening frequently in the last week or so. You can go to the NOAA site or SolarHam to learn more than you probably want to know about this.

Radio blackouts are no fun, but they’re especially disappointing if you’ve hauled your gear out for a POTA activation. I went up to the Island Lake Recreation Area (US-3315) on Saturday afternoon and fought the conditions for a while. I was also competing for calls from the Indiana, New England, and 7th Call Area QSO parties.

I started out on 20 meters, but after making only five contacts, I decided to try 17 meters, where I was able to scratch out a couple more.  I then tried 15 meters, but had absolutely non success there, so I went back to 20 meters.

By hunting around for some park-to-park contacts, I was able to make 20 contacts overall, but it took me two and a half hours to do it. I’m not sure if the conditions or the contest competition was the main culprit, but activating on a big contest weekend was probably not the smartest thing to do.

Activating the AACME

Conditions weren’t all that much better Sunday morning, when three of us—Joe AC8ES, James AE8JF, and yours truly—set up to demo amateur radio at the Ann Arbor Creativity and Making Expo (AACME).  Joe had brought his Xiegu G90 and Alex Loop, but we were barely able to hear anything.

We attributed this to two factors. First, we were trying to operate the loop inside the building. Second, there had been reports of solar flares that morning that were adversely affecting HF propagation.

Despite that, we had a great time. Joe had brought his latest project—a QRP dummy load/wattmeter—that’s going to be our club’s next build project. And, I brought various keys and code oscillators to demonstrate Morse Code and get kids (and adults) to send their names in Morse Code.

A little after 1 pm, I decided to set up my KX-3 and see what I could do with it. Before the event started, I had set up my 66-ft. doublet in the courtyard just outside where our table was located. Over the next hour and a half, I managed to scratch out eight contacts, all on 20 meters, and all with participants in the New England QSO Party.

Overall, I think our participation in the AACME was a success. We were able to spread the word about amateur radio and our club. I passed out some flyers for my June 1 Tech class, and met some other interesting people.