 | | Fly Me To The...Ionosphere?
You won't find a song of this title anywhere in your Sinatra collection, but now you can get software to "fly" your PC above the ionosphere and watch it change under the influence of solar activity in near-real-time, courtesy of NASA-funded research (with a little help from Google Earth, whose software you must also install to use it).
"This is an exciting development," says solar physicist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. "The ionosphere is important to pilots, ham radio operators, earth scientists and even soldiers. Using this new 4D tool, they can monitor and study the ionosphere as if they're actually inside it."
The April 30 announcement (with all necessary links to obtain the software) can be found in a story titled 4D Ionosphere at Science@NASA, by Dr. Tony Phillips.
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| | The LOWDOWN This Month
In the May 2008 issue of the club publication:
- "DX Downstairs" Kevin Carey presents members' LF and VLF loggings.
- "On The Air" Experimenters on the 160-190kHz and 136kHz bands... and...
- "The Top End" MedFER and HiFER beacon lists, compiled by John Davis.
- "News From the Old World" Alan Gale keeps us informed of LF experimentation on the "other side of the pond."
- "VLF Field Strength Meter" Article by Harry Weber.
- "Vintage LF/ELF receivers" A retrospective of interesting receivers, 1918 to 1963, compiled by Harry Weber.
Interested in subscribing? Click here for address, rates, and remittance information (including PayPal).
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| | Site Redevelopment Continues
As we promised before the site went away in March, we began bringing it back by the first of April. We are slowly restoring some of the most used older features and documents, with revisions and updates where appropriate, and will be implementing some new features over the next several weeks as well.
One thing that will become evident is a shift in focus toward more LWCA member-oriented content. There will still be plenty of information for newcomers to the field of longwave radio, but some data will be available either first or--in a few cases--exclusively to LWCA members.
Webmaster John Davis stated, "The extent and freshness of our outreach content will depend almost exclusively on how much participation the dues-paying club members are willing to invest in this site. No club dues are spent to support the site, but it will be member volunteers whose efforts collect, organize, and present the content. Let me stress that we will continue to value contributions from non-members who also use the site and will serve them as best we can, but our first emphasis will be on meeting members' needs."
"This also means we will be more selective about what other Web sites and online services we promote via the LWCA site," Davis added. "We will continue to link to sites offering goods and information of broad interest, and our members' own Web sites, of course. However, we are not interested in promoting sites that offer themselves as alternatives to organized efforts, or which otherwise compete in such a way as to fragment the hobby further."
Watch this page for further news about new features in coming weeks or months.
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General Topics of Interest
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| | Related Longwave Sites
•William Hepburn's DX Information Centre features many kinds of DX resources, including much on services found at LF and VLF; for example, regularly updated lists of NAVTEX and TWEB (Transcribed Weather) stations, LF/VLF time signals, and longwave broadcasters. Visit the site at its new location:
DX Information Centre. Don't overlook the pages for higher frequencies, and the propagation forecasts as well.
•Radio Waves Below 22 kHz Renato Romero's eclectic collection of topics pertaining to both manmade and natural radio signals from near DC to the upper end of audibility. Includes the VLF Open Lab, and articles by many contributors...some fairly orthodox, and some not. Visit: www.vlf.it
•Whistler Receiver Online Hear a NASA Project INSPIRE receiver in near-real-time from Huntsville, Alabama. Lots of sferics, including tweaks and occasional whistlers, should be audible, particularly in the hours just before dawn at the receiving site. Listen to the receiver through the SpaceWeather INSPIRE page and get more background on whistlers and related phenomena from this NASA news headline.
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| | QRSS and WOLF Software
Rik Strobbe's QRSS software (for transmitting extremely slow CW) is usually available from our file library, but while it is temporarily out of service, you can obtain QRSS and Rik's other useful software at the ON7YD download page.
Continuing Development of Argo. Alberto di Bene regularly posts the latest version of Argo, a receiving tool for displaying slow CW, that performs FFT spectral analysis and displays it in ways optimized for QRSS. Many of the transoceanic LF amateur records were set using Argo at the receiving end. Argo has somewhat similar performance to Spectran, but interacts better with the user's soundcard and is customized for QRSS modes.
Slow CW for Linux. Claudio Girardi (IN3OTD) has released the next version of his Slow CW software for users of the Linux operating system, alpha 0.3.1. The program (called glfer) contains both transmit and receive capability, the latter including an FFT-based spectrum analyzer somewhat similar to those found in popular Windows Slow CW programs.
As with much open-source software in the X-world, you have to compile the C source code yourself. Users will also need additional code libraries. Links to those, plus downloadable source code, can be found at Claudio's glfer page.
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