Comment on Monitor your AREDN Node with Prometheus and Grafana
irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I used to be into Ham radio when I was a younger man. I took a course from NRI I saw in an old popular science mag. Built a 5 watt receiver and xmitter, code only. On a good night with good ionosphere coverage, I could bounce that 5 watts half way around the world. I would have never have imagined communication technologies as we enjoy today.
starkzarn@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Love to hear things like that! When I first got licensed the solar cycle was utter trash. We’re past the peak now, but band conditions are still pretty good generally. A few watts and a wire will still get you somewhere with CW and some other forward error corrected modes (like FT8). I have a lot of fun with the digital stuff like AREDN, but it’s definitely a different ball game and the old school SSB-based radio still has its place in my heart.
irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Wow…memories come flooding back.
The ionosphere depletion really made an impression on me as a young man. In conjunction with my ham radio, I used to point a telescope at the sun that had a special lens on it to keep you from burning a hole in your head. Then I would turn the eyepiece 180 deg, put a regular lens in and point it onto a white piece of cardboard. You could watch the solar flares and track them across the sun as very dark shadowy spots on the cardboard. When there weren’t a lot of solar flare activity, signals went farther on the bounce. In my memory it was probably the last time that we as a global community banded together to solve the issue of ionosphere depletion because of aerosols.
Many many nights of QSL CQ! CQ!. I still have a trunk full of old QSL cards. Do they still do that now days?
starkzarn@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Yes! Qsl cards are very much still alive and well. Some traditions will never die. The special event stations are fun to get cards from.
Super cool anecdote on the telescope thing, I’ve never heard of that.
I hope you get back on the radio, it’s a great hobby. It’s a nice stress relief outlet for me these days too.