A 9 to 1 UNUN for random wire matching

MossRoad · Mar 6, 2017

Here's the kind of wording that makes things interesting....

"This F region is very anomalous in nature." :laughing:

k0ua · Mar 6, 2017

MossRoad said:
Here's the kind of wording that makes things interesting....

"This F region is very anomalous in nature." :laughing:

Yeah some of the verbiage is kind of interesting. I just worked my very first Meteor Scatter contact this morning on 6 meters. This is an interesting and sometimes frustrating mode. Bouncing your signals off of the ionized trails of meteors kind of "anomalous" But we made it work.

If we ever get some F region propagation on 6 meters we wouldn't need to bounce signals off of meteor trails. But I have never see F layer on 6 meters, and if we don't get some better sunspot cycles I may never live long enough to see it. Unfortunately in the past when we had good propagation on 6 meters, I didn't have any gear to use on it. Now I have the gear, but the sunspots are not cooperating.

The "experts" are making noises that we may be going into another Maunder Minimum (look it up) and if that is true, I will be worm food before the sunspots will be back. What this will do for the earths climate is hard to say for sure, but some think that investing in snow and ice gear would be a good investment.

MossRoad · Mar 6, 2017

I think it more likely some Volcano in Iceland will cause the rush on snow equipment than sunspots. Hmmm.... how did that last volcano in Iceland affect you? How about the one in the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo back in 1991? I remember some really great sunsets after that. Does the dust effect your ops?

k0ua · Mar 6, 2017

MossRoad said:
I think it more likely some Volcano in Iceland will cause the rush on snow equipment than sunspots. Hmmm.... how did that last volcano in Iceland affect you? How about the one in the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo back in 1991? I remember some really great sunsets after that. Does the dust effect your ops?

Not that I know of globally. It might have some effect locally, but keep in mind these reflective layers we speak of are in the ionosphere, not the troposphere. The dust might be reflective to some extend to VHF or above I am not sure, but I have never heard of any effect on global HF communications.

MossRoad · Mar 6, 2017

I was wondering. I read dust from Pinatubo went about 45km up at its highest.

MossRoad · Mar 6, 2017

Some more reading.... Volcanoes are more likely to clog cooling filters for radios and overheat them VS blocking radio waves.

k0ua · Mar 6, 2017

MossRoad said:
Some more reading.... Volcanoes are more likely to clog cooling filters for radios and overheat them VS blocking radio waves.

Yeah, they are not nice when that dust is sucked into jet engine intakes either...:shocked:

MossRoad · Mar 7, 2017

Like a grinder!

I used to work at airports.... The plane that got me thinking about engine sucking death is the 737-300 (I think). That's the one that came out with (I think I got this correct) a high bypass ratio engine that could actually suck you in from behind the front of the engine at idle. In safety training, they told us to NEVER approach the airplane with a vehicle (like fuel truck, baggage cart, etc...) or on foot on the right side of the plane until you could see the little yellow barber pole painted on the spinner, indicating the engine was OFF. Look at this picture... see the little yellow swirl on the spinner in the engine? Note the location of the baggage door and baggage loading equiment... hahahahah SUCK!!! Those engines also sat really low to the ground and are notorious for sucking FOD.

In this video, you can see an 800 model sucking the snow off the ground at idle. Towards the end of the video, you can see a red line on the side of the engine. At idle, that thing can suck you in from behind the front at that red line. Yikes!