Space Weather

Solar Flare Alert

Tonight's X2.1 flare appears to be a long-duration flare which is still ongoing.

It's coming from active region AR3842 which gave us the X7 and X9 flares last week. It's now rotated close to the west limb so is unlikely to throw any CMEs (coronal mass ejections) in our direction. The solar flares will, though, still cause radio blackouts on the HF radio bands (and noise on higher frequencies due to radio bursts) on earth's dayside as long as they're on this side of the sun.

#spaceweather

Good morning!

Megacycles. Kilocycles.

A beautiful old Collins radio receiver rests in the parking lot at a hamfest in east-central Minnesota. SUV tire for scale.

Old rigs tempt me but I managed to get out of there with only a lariat of coax, a roll of teletype paper, a Johnson Viking t-shirt, and a quarter-inch tip-ring-ring-sleeve to hook up a Morse code key.

I'd never been to a hamfest before! I enjoyed visiting and learning the protocols.