Another D Day Special Event

This one is being carried out by the Torbay Amateur Radio Society in England.  Here's the info that the ARRL is disseminating:

June 6 will mark the 75th anniversary of Operation Overlord during World War II and the D-Day landings in Normandy. To commemorate those who took part, a small team from the Torbay Amateur Radio Society (TARS) in England is organizing a chain of five special event stations along the UK’s southern coastline. Each will be based in the geographical area of a beach-landing force point of departure and will use a relevant call sign.

TARS will activate a site above Brixham Harbour in Devon — a departure point for many US soldiers who later landed on Utah Beach and will use the call sign GB75UF.

Other clubs activating similar relevant locations will use these call signs: GB75OF — Omaha Beach, South Dorset Radio Society; GB75GF — Gold Beach, Southampton ARC and Soton University Wireless Society; GB75JF — Juno Beach, Itchen Valley ARC and Waterside New Forest ARC, and GB75SF — Sword Beach, Fort Purbrook ARC.

In addition, TARS hopes to have two club stations from the Normandy area of France activating sites on the beaches. Logging is being coordinated centrally, and stations who contact two or more of the stations within the chain will be able to download a suitable certificate to commemorate their achievement. Details on logging, certificates, and operating frequencies will be available on the TARS website. Contact the organizing team via email.

SSB frequencies will include 3.644, 7.144, 14.144, 18.144, 21.244, 24.944, and 28.244 MHz (data only on 10.144 MHz). Stations operating on CW or data will attempt to use similar frequencies ending in 44.

And now for something completely different.

I saw some Hams talking about this on one of the e-mail reflectors I subscribe to. It's the Acu-Rite Lightning Detector.

With the plethora of bad weather we've been getting here, I went onto eBay and picked one up for $20. It arrived yesterday and I put the batteries in, turned it on and it started detecting local lightning strikes immediately - at about 17 miles out. At that point, I wasn't even hearing thunder rumbles. Within a few minutes I WAS indeed able to see flashes and hear thunder, so it seems to work. 

A few hours later, it started chirping again and sure enough - about ten minutes or so after chirpage, another thunderstorm was upon us. I will keep this little guy going so that when I'm home and the antennas are connected, I'll get ample warning that it's time to go disconnect. Better safe than sorry!

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

Scary evening

Last night was Senior Award night at the High School where our daughter Cara attends. When we got out of the ceremony at around 9:00 PM the sky was a mass of lightning. We were in the midst of a good ol' fashioned electrical storm.  It was to the point where the periods of darkness were actually farther apart than the instances of lightning. The lightning seemed to be occurring in all directions, too - East, West, North and South of us, all at once. It was like there were fireworks displays all around us and while we couldn't see the actual fireworks, we could see the flashes from the explosions. The last time I remember an electrical storm of this intensity and duration has to be more than 25 years ago.

There was no rain, no booming cracks of thunder, just low rumbles with the skies lit up all over. This little patch of Central New Jersey made out well, thanks be to God. Other parts of NJ did not. Way to the north of us, much closer to the NY border in Stanhope, NJ a possible tornado did a lot of damage to Lenape Regional High School. There was a sports award banquet going on and everyone huddled in the gym while the storm raged. Besides the structural damage, two teens were injured by falling branches on the way to their cars in the parking lot. The damage to the school roof was enough to cancel classes today.

Closer to the north of us, a strong cell that had rotating winds raced across Morris and Union counties and into NYC and Staten Island. There were reports of heavy rain, hail and damaging winds. To the south of us, way down in Salem county, there was also a strong cell with rotating winds that did damage down there.

I heard on the news this morning during my drive into work, that this may have been the first time in the recorded history of New Jersey that three possible tornadoes occurred on the same day, within hours of each other. This was the same storm system that ripped the roof off Hara Arena in Dayton the night before. The National Weather Service will be busy in New Jersey today, trying to determine if these were indeed tornadoes, or possibly macro or microbursts of wind. The Doppler Radar evidence of rotational winds seems to be leaning towards tornadoes at this time.

Of course, the antennas were unplugged that the W2LJ shack last night, and they remain unplugged. We may be in store for more thunderstorms, some possibly severe later this afternoon and this evening. Stay safe my friends! This is a good reminder for all of us Amateur Radio operators who are currently living in this Summer season - keep those antennas unplugged and off your radios whenever you're not home and while a storm is raging and you are at home.. There does not have to be a direct hit to damage your gear. Enough static in the air from nearby surrounding lightning is enough to damage your prized Ham Radio possessions. Unless you have invested into a comprehensive system for lightning abatement at your shack that you are willing to trust 100%  (like in the photo above), it's easier and less expensive to disconnect and toss the cables out the window.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

What the ..... ????

Every now and then, I'll "Google" Amateur Radio and hit the news tab, to see if anything interesting pops up.  This time, a story came up about an 80 year old Ham from Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, who was rescued from his tower earlier this week. It would appear that he was climbing his tower to secure something in advance of one the Nor'easters to go through lately.

Two things in the article caught my eye. The mention that he is 80 years old is not one of them. I know a few 80 year olds who are still quite spry. In fact, they may be doing better than this 61 year old. No, the first thing that caught my eye was this sentence:

"William Welch, an electrician and avid amateur radio operator, got his sneaker caught atop a 20-foot-tall backyard antenna after he scaled the structure to secure it ahead of the impending nor’easter, his wife Betty told The Times."

Sneakers? Really? Now look, I'm not a tower owner or climber, but it would seem to be common sense to me that were you to climb a tower, you'd want to be wearing work boots with a steel toe and even perhaps a steel reinforced sole. To this uneducated Amateur Radio Op, sneakers don't seem to be the "de rigueur" for tower climbs.

However, this next part REALLY caught my eye:

"Firefighters moved back and forth over the ladder and put a helmet on Welch and fitted him with a harness. The harness was fastened to the tower, so Welch couldn’t fall. "

So you mean to tell me that he climbed a tower with NO hard hat or climbing harness?  I sincerely hope this was just a case of bad reporting. I know I'm NOT the voice of experience or expertise ....... but seriously? No hard hat, no climbing harness, and it seems like no climbing partner, unless you count his wife who may have been watching from the ground.

We're finishing up an 8 week TECHNICIAN CLASS license course and even there, tower climbing safety is really stressed. Hard hat, climbing harness and NEVER CLIMB ALONE are stressed over and over and over!

If this is par for the course for this gentleman, than he's very lucky to have made it to 80. I hope this caused him to take pause and re-evaluate his past practice, and perhaps bone up on tower climbing safety. And while he's at it, perhaps say a prayer of thanks that things didn't turn out way worse than they did.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!