The AM Forum

Anyone going to be on the air during the eclipse?

Yes on 80  meters.  I have seen a previous eclipse but never been on the radio.  Moving my daily schedule up to 1:15 to 1:45.

I'll probably be on 40M around that time, Steve.

Should be interesting to see what happens. All new for me. I'll look for you on 40 meters Buddly.

 Here in CA the eclipse begins around 9 AM and will be max at 10:15 AM. I'm normally not on the radio that time of day but have listened a few mornings this week on 80 meters and by 9 Am all appears dead. We will have about 80% totality here in the Bay Area.

 I plan to listen and work who ever I hear on 80 tomorrow morning.

I'll be watching and listening.

The last near-total-eclipse I experienced was more exciting than you might expect. It's nothing like a moon eclipse. Here's a few interesting things to look for:

1) It was mid afternoon in summer and the dead 75M band suddenly opened. It was almost like nighttime conditions, but weaker.  I could hear stations coming in that were normally attenuated by the sun's lower ionization layer. It doesn't take long for the lack of sun to open up the band - even during a partial eclipse.

2) It became noticeably dark, something like a thunderstorm. It was a different feeling from sunset, rather like making shadows on the wall with a flashlight look.

3) The shadows produced by the sun were crescents!  Instead of leaves on trees producing normal roundish shadows, everything had a crescent look to it. You must see this to understand what I mean. Weird.

4) And this really surprised me, though obvious... if the sun is blocked by 75%, then its light and heat are blocked 75%. It felt very cool outside and I thought that this is how it must be on Mars with a small fraction of the heat. I could face the sun and there was hardly a sensation of heat at all. It would quickly become a cold, frozen planet on Earth with even a small amount of heat blocked for very long.

The combination of all these things made it an unusual experience. I can just imagine what it would be like in a total eclipse for 2+ minutes.

What I find almost prophetic: We happen to be in a precise spot in time where the moon almost exactly covers the sun in an eclipse. How coincidental is that? In the far future there will not be enough moon shadow to cover the sun as the moon moves farther away from the Earth..  The early Earth had total solar eclipses lasting much longer due to the bigger shadow produced by a closer moon to Earth.


T

Has anyone tried the multiple welding lenses stacked for viewing? I have a set of double round lens cutting goggles. If I stack two #5 lenses in one holder and add two more #5 on top it reduces a phone flashlight to a faint dot in the lens.
I found a formula for adding lenses that is S1+S2+S3+S4 -1 to equate the resulting power. If true it is overkill, three would be equivalent of the recommended #14 lens for safe viewing.
I was going to carry these with me since we are golfing at the eclipse time.

Any thoughts? or Forgetaboutit 8)

Not sure about stacking filters. It sounds logical, but there is such a huge risk if wrong. But with a #13-14 total, a few seconds of viewing every few minutes may be OK.


For general info - From the American Astronomical Society:


What to Avoid

Ordinary sunglasses (or multiple pairs of sunglasses), neutral density or polarizing filters (such as those made for camera lenses), smoked glass, photographic or X-ray film (unexposed, exposed, or developed), "space blankets," potato-chip bags, DVDs, and any other materials you may have heard about for solar viewing are not safe. In some cases these homemade filters may seem like they dim the Sun to a comfortable level, but that doesn't mean they do so across the whole electromagnetic spectrum. While you're enjoying a "comfortable" view of the "dim" Sun, solar infrared radiation could be cooking your retinas. And you wouldn't know till later, because your retinas don't have pain receptors. Only after the eclipse, when you notice blind spots or other vision problems, would you realize you'd made a catastrophic mistake.

What about welding filters? The only ones that are safe for direct viewing of the Sun with your eyes are those of Shade 12 or higher. These are much darker than the filters used for most kinds of welding. If you have an old welder's helmet around the house and are thinking of using it to view the Sun, make sure you know the filter's shade number. If it's less than 12 (and it probably is), don't even think about using it to look at the Sun. Many people find the Sun too bright even in a Shade 12 filter, and some find the Sun too dim in a Shade 14 filter — but Shade 13 filters are uncommon and can be hard to find. In any case, welding filters generally give a sickly green image of the Sun, whereas special-purpose solar viewers give a white, yellow, or orange image, which is much more pleasing and natural. If you really want to get a welding filter, we recommend that you buy it from a welding supply company; we've heard reports of people ordering "Shade 14" welding goggles from random online stores and receiving much lighter filters than they were promised.

Here's one the most informative short articles I've read on this solar eclipse:


http://cs.astronomy.com/asy/b/astronomy/archive/2014/08/05/25-facts-you-should-know-about-the-august-21-2017-total-solar-eclipse.aspx

T

I've got a meeting up the road at 1PM but should be home in time for the peak of the event. Peak is 2:42 for the D.C. area just east of here with the show ending around 4:10. I think it starts showing up at 1:17.

Will fire up on 40m and see how conditions are.  8)

Well, no eclipse or radio at this point. Big ol' thunderstorm rumbling around over us atm. Maybe soon?

Didn't see much here. Kinda underwhelming. ???

Talked to KC8ZUL on 40 meter AM fone. No one else.

Did contact Nevada on 40 meter SSB, and I heard many other stations out west. Seems like there was some propagation enhancement for a short while.

Here in the Bay Area the eclipse was supposed to begin at 9:01 AM, reach totality at 10:15 AM and end at 11:37 AM PDT.

My working equipment was an Icom 756 PROII transceiver, a 100 watts into a coax fed 80 meter dipole cut for the phone band, best match at about 3.915 MHz, the plan was to monitor from 3.8 to 4 MHz where my antenna performs best using Lower Sideband Mode.

At 9:18 AM the local noise floor was a S9 plus 10 Db, NOISY!!. I did hear some AM activity on 3.880 and heard W6AQU in Montague, Ca which is on the Oregon border 280 miles north of me but he talking on AM to several stations in Oregon and Washington which I could not copy. I did not want to set up my AM equipment but did come back to 3.880 to see if W6AQU’s signal had changed, normally at that time of day he should be very weak and getting weaker as the morning progressed. That was not the case as he got stronger as time went on. The noise floor also dropped progressively as time went on too.

I did not hear anyone else on the band until 10:10 AM when I heard KB6BIS quite strongly calling CQ, he was located in Santa Barbara 260 miles south down the coast from me running 200 watts into a 80 meter delta loop at 75 feet, a VERY GOOD antenna. He was S9 plus 20, the noise floor by then had dropped to a S6, I answered and he heard me at a S9 plus 10. KB6BIS called for any other stations and NB6TE answered who was located on the Sonoma County coast 90 miles north of me, he was S9 plus here and running a 173 foot doublet for an antenna and a 100 watts. The three of us were easy copy to each other.

Not to long after AD6DX in Magalia, Ca broke in, he was also S9 plus and running a kilowatt, from here Magalia is a 150 miles northeast of me in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Then W6OQX, a friend of KD6BIS and also in Santa Barbara broke in, he was S9 also, it was now about 10:39 AM. KI6ZOH in Fort Bragg on the Mendocino County coast 150 miles north of me broke in, I could not hear him but the other stations could, he only stayed briefly.

KD6BIS in Santa Barbara who we could  hear us all acted as a control station.  K6RBN in San Anselmo Marin County broke in, he was S9 plus and only 30 miles from me across mostly San Francisco Bay so likely ground wave, he stayed briefly.

At 10:50 KJ6GUE in Half Moon Bay on the San Mateo County coast came up, he was heard well by KB6BIS in Santa Barbara but I could only tell he was there and not copy but this was also the closest  station to me at 22 miles but the 2,000 foot coast range blocked the ground wave so no short skip.

By 10:56 the noise floor was back to S9 plus 10 and KB6BIS was noticeably weaker by 11:15 AM the band had died.

Local weather here was high heavy overcast, typical Bay Area Summer morning weather, I did go outside when the eclipse was at totality, 10:15 Am but could not notice any difference in lighting, the sun did not come out until just before noon.

                                                                                                                 Tom, W6TOM

The real hype was just to get on the air on a week day.  :D

Of course, activity can bring on all sorts of perceptions when things get dark and weird for awhile.
But, a period of partial darkness, or even some total darkness at some point on the earth probably has little to do with D and E layer  ionization and/or solar wind enhancement, which is what would affect some propagation but probably not much.

Got about 75% eclipse here in TX. OK. in 7 years we get the real thing.

     Interesting, yes crescents in the tree shadows.  That is what I remember about an eclipse, I think it was the
late 80's in Mass.   Out here in AZ, usually it is in the 90's by 10am but it was 84 then dropped a degree.  dimmer cool
sun. we have a HB solar pool heater, 2400' irrigation tubing coiled, that wasn't doing much.  things heated up after it
peaked, the pool went from 81 to 87 much steeper curve then usual.  I had 40mtrs on in the background, qrn was up during
its peak but nothing much unusual.  the eclipse was only 60% here.  below is a pic, taken with binoculars on a
white sheet screen.

We had about 90% totality in Tum Tum, WA....I heard a lot of the stations in W6TOM,s post..worked some oregon Stations that I don't normally hear very well that time of day on 75 meters..Worked a station in Seattle that said he briefly heard some Japanese long path stuff on 40 meters during the totality .....Nothing really unusual but it was good to get on the radio....It didn't get very dark here..I was surprised....

We were somewhere around 82% here though even at the peak, with a thunderstorm going on overhead, it got no darker than a typical storm front. I guess it was more dramatic in the line of totalitarianism.

Here's an excellent pre-eclipse video explaining a lot:

https://youtu.be/GD2Znr7kFG4

didn't get on the radio. my brother and I decided to get more work done on the new huntin' cabin.

But Todd, yes, welding filters worked just fine. I stacked a #13 and #11 at the start and at maximum here (80.6%) I was down to a 10 with no problem.

no radio on this end but from a visual stand point, with some clouds, the light was diminished and diffused. Diffused probably due to the high overcast. Sort of had a surreal effect if that makes any sense.  According to my Davis Vantage Vue weather station, temp dropped 7 degrees. Did not see the crescent shaped shadows through the tree leaves probably because of the diffused light through the clouds. I've seen the crescent shaped  shadows in a previous eclipse here in SE CT. Sort of disappointed that I did not see that effect. Oh well. Fascinating nonetheless.

Next total eclipse to hit the US is predicted to be April 8, 2024. Path is from the SW to the NE.  Path of totality starting in TX through Illinois and into the NE is upstate NY, northern VT, NH, and ME. Almost a criss-cross of this last path. Southern Illinois will get to experience 2 totals in less than a decade.

I wondered what the eclipse would look like from up above.  International Space Station recorded the event and there is indeed a circular shadow cast by the moon. The shadow can be seen from the NASA website.

Visually underwhelming here in SE CT due to a layer of clouds that came in just as the eclipse started.  The sun was breaking through the clouds a bit but shadows were weak and no real sense of anything unusual going on.

To feed the CW skimmers that were collecting data during the eclipse, I ran the little K1 in the Tacoma on 40 CW in beacon mode at 5 watts to the mobile whip repeating CQ TEST for about two hours centered on the maximum eclipse effect point, which around here was about 1445 local. Also did the same in the shack on 80 CW manually keying the DX-40, and also worked a few stations that came back to the CQs on 80.  Nothing really sounded atypical from 40 and 80 meter mid-afternoon in summer high D layer absorption conditions.   Also monitored NPM's signal level from Oahu on 21.4 kHz VLF with my Wandell und Goltermann selective level meter fed from the 80 meter dipole.  It maintained a consistent nominal 10 dB SNR above a -70 dB noise floor using the 400 Hz IF bandpass filter in the WuG. Also a typical mid-afternoon observation.  It generally comes in best in early morning around sunrise here and again between about noon and four.  I suspect it's short path west-east propagation at sunrise and long path east-west in the afternoon, signal levels  at sunrise are usually about 10 dB higher than the afternoon levels.

On 40 and 80, generally very weak returns from only a few reversebeacon.net skimmers in the northeast and to the west.  One odd observation was very high and consistent SNR hits on both 80 and 40 from the skimmer at N2GZ, one I had not seen before on reversebeacon.net.  When I looked up the call, I realized that it was from a local guy, Greg Zenger, who recently set up a skimmer at his new QTH in North Stonington, CT about 10 miles from here.

Wish I had known ahead of time about Dean's binocular on notebook viewing technique.  Looked great.  How long do you get to view before you set the notebook on fire?

Also, the new dawn to dusk lights I just installed at the cabin came on near maximum and turned off 1/2 hour later. Neat schtuff.

My three stacked #5 lenses worked great in the burning goggles. No day after headaches like I've heard about on the news.

I'll be ready for 1024 and we will be almost right on the next track.

Bob

2024, or do you have that damn Flux capacitor?

Been looking for it  since I saw Doc's DeLorean in the trash pile.

Still has Mr.  Fusion on it.  Damn the Libyans!

--Shane
KD6VXI

Didn't get to do much radio, -just optical and enjoyed showing my wife views through a telescope.

Set up oldie but goodie Brandon 94mm f/7 APO refractor w/Thousand Oaks full aperture filter.

  Took pictures with a Sony camera simply by holding camera up to 40 to 14 mm oculars.  Thankfully a raised ring on the oculars allowed decent centering but of course some jiggling was hard to suppress.  Most of my photos turned out to be overexposed beyond Photoshop recovery.  

The camera that I used some years ago with decent adapters and cable shutter release was lifted via broken window out of the rental car in St. Croix some years ago.

Most of the partial eclipse here in Bridgeport, WV was sunny and clear but for a quick storm cell that moved through,  ... . you guessed it, just about 20 minutes before minimum crescent, but mercifully broke in small bits to get a picture or two, then closed up again for 30 min. or so then opened up to clear sky for remainder of eclipse.  

Shots displayed for you are one on egress showing sunspots as they re-appeared.  Visually they are much more defined than the photos taken.

And one of almost min. crescent through wispy overcast during a quick window when clouds momentarily parted.

We get another semi-local shot at it again in 2024.   Hope to be able to get on centerline for that one.  ;D
  

More pix, overexposed, but showing progress.
Don't bother to blow them up much if at all.

Note crescent reversal before and after eclipse max.   Also all are reversed L to R a/c star diagonal from real orientation anyway.

1. first bite.
2. advancing
3. receding
 

Very cool Rick!

--Shane
KD6VXI

A guy I talked to on 40 meters sent me this pic. He is in the Nashville and took it during the totality. Looks like sunset or sunrise!

looks like a sunset. does the horizon turn orange during an eclipse?

If you are in the path of the totality, apparently the horizon for the full 360
degrees around you looks like a twilight post sunset or pre sunrise.

From the ARRL Letter

Solar Eclipse QSO Party a Hit, Science Conclusions Await Additional Analysis

08/24/2017

The 2017 Solar Eclipse QSO Party (SEQP) is history, and, while logs are still coming in, the preliminary participation numbers look good, according to Nathaniel Frissell, W2NAF, of HamSCI.

“Although the final numbers are not yet in, preliminary reports show that over 670,000 spots were detected by the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN), and over 542,000 spots were reported to PSKReporter [PSK Automatic Propagation Reporter] during the SEQP,” Frissell told ARRL on August 22. “These numbers will increase as data is processed. The PSKReporter statistics page shows that today [August 21] had the highest amount of activity of any day currently available on the website.”

Frissell said overall, the event went well, and he heard a lot of on-the-air activity during the 8 hours the SEQP was running.

“It will take some time to get a more scientific analysis of this, but we should have some results by the middle of this semester,” said Frissell, who is an associate research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Frissell and others are investigating whether the sudden absence of sunlight during the eclipse — and especially of solar ultra-violet and x-rays — would briefly change the properties of the upper atmosphere.

Despite more than 60 years of research, “open questions remain regarding eclipse-induced ionospheric impacts,” Frissell explained in a paper, “HamSCI and the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse,” that he’ll deliver this year at the ARRL-TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC).

He is encouraging anyone who took part in the SEQP to submit a log by September 30. Once their logs are submitted, SEQP participants will get a PDF Certificate of Participation. Frissell, who was in Gilbertsville, Kentucky to observe the eclipse, said, “Totality was beautiful.”

At Maxim Memorial Station W1AW, the focus was more on keeping on top of any emergency situations that could arise from the thousands of visitors converging along the narrow strip of totality. ARRL Emergency Preparedness Manager Mike Corey, KI1U, and his assistant Ken Bailey, K1FUG, checked into and monitored the SATERN Net on 20 meters. They also monitored the interoperability channel 1 on 60 meters for coordination with federal partners. W1AW Station Manager Joe Carcia, NJ1Q, checked into WL2K nodes on 40 meters for any possible traffic. “Also, during this time, we went outside to look at the eclipse!” Carcia added.

Many Amateur Radio special event stations were also on the air along the path of totality on August 21.

Veteran Broadcast Listener (BCL) Bill Feidt, NG3K, in Maryland, conducted an informal propagation experiment on the AM Broadcast Band, listening on 1070 kHz, which, he reported, “came alive with many signals,” at about 1830 UTC. “It was pretty much a jumble,” he told ARRL. “But just before 1900 UTC, I was able to identify WNCT in Greenville, North Carolina, which became quite strong and dominant for a few minutes.” WNCT’s 50-kW daytime signal is aimed away from Maryland.

Elsewhere, using the S meter on his Panasonic RF-4900 receiver, 88-year-old John S. Erickson of Schenectady, New York, the father of ionospheric researcher Phil Erickson, W1PJE, recorded the signal strength of WWV time signals on 10 and 15 MHz every 10 minutes. His results show that nighttime conditions, where WWV got stronger on 10 MHz and weaker at 15 MHz, occurred before local eclipse passage on long paths. His data are being passed on to HamSCI for analysis.

“RF Seismograph” Sees Little Effect

An initial analysis of solar eclipse RF Seismograph measurements by Alex Schwarz, VE7DXW, and his Modulation-Demodulation Software Radio (MDSR) group has suggested that the effect of the brief interruption in solar radiation within an approximately 70-mile-wide strip had minimal overall effect on radio propagation. The Scanning RF Seismograph is a real-time HF propagation monitoring tool.

“The Solar Eclipse RF Seismograph exclusively showed that propagation changes, but not to the extent that folk tales report,” Schwarz and the MDSR team said in a news release. “During the eclipse we measured in three locations, and two did not show any changes in the way propagation behaves. On the third station, at an elevation of 900 meters, the 40-meter band came up, but that is not any different from regular 40-meter behavior.”

The team believes that increased absorption on the low bands from high solar activity may have been a factor in the measurement’s not yielding expected results. “The small band of darkness could not compensate for the thicker D Layer,” the MDSR news release said.

Frissell told Schwarz that he’d be “very hesitant to make these conclusions so quickly and based on observations from a single point of reference.”

“We know from past experiments that there are significant ionospheric changes resulting from the eclipse. Even from a citizen-science standpoint, many of these changes have been documented. We are hoping to see these effects on a larger scale.”

Frissell pointed to observations made during the 1999 eclipse in the UK by Ruth Bamford at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

“I think more work needs to be done before any firm conclusions can be made,” he told ARRL. “I believe we will be able to see an effect in our observations.”