Hamvention 2021 open for business
Yesterday, I received an email from Hamvention with the following message:
To all our loyal inside vendors, welcome to the Dayton Hamvention 2021 as we hope all of you will join us again. We look forward to seeing you and serving your needs for another successful show.
So, Hamvention is forging ahead with planning for 2021. Whether or not it’s actually held depends on a lot of factors, but the planning has started, as it must, at any rate. If I had to guess now, I’d say it won’t be held, but who knows?
Sunspot Cycle 25 to set records?
The latest word from the scientific community is that the next sunspot cycle could be one heck of a sunspot cycle, a welcome message for radio amateurs around the world. In a recent issue of the journal Solar Physics, the abstract of the paper “Overlapping Magnetic Activity Cycles and the Sunspot Number: Forecasting Sunspot Cycle 25 Amplitude,” notes:
The Sun exhibits a well-observed modulation in the number of spots on its disk over a period of about 11 years. From the dawn of modern observational astronomy sunspots have presented a challenge to understanding – their quasi-periodic variation in number, first noted 175 years ago, stimulates community-wide interest to this day. A large number of techniques are able to explain the temporal landmarks, (geometric) shape, and amplitude of sunspot “cycles,” however forecasting these features accurately in advance remains elusive. Recent observationally-motivated studies have illustrated a relationship between the Sun’s 22-year (Hale) magnetic cycle and the production of the sunspot cycle landmarks and patterns, but not the amplitude of the sunspot cycle. Using (discrete) Hilbert transforms on more than 270 years of (monthly) sunspot numbers we robustly identify the so-called ”termination” events that mark the end of the previous 11-yr sunspot cycle, the enhancement/acceleration of the present cycle, and the end of 22-yr magnetic activity cycles. Using these we extract a relationship between the temporal spacing of terminators and the magnitude of sunspot cycles. Given this relationship and our prediction of a terminator event in 2020, we deduce that Sunspot Cycle 25 could have a magnitude that rivals the top few since records began. This outcome would be in stark contrast to the community consensus estimate of sunspot cycle 25 magnitude.
That sounds pretty good to me. Of course, we’ll have to wait 5 years before we know if this is true or not. The complete paper is online.
Learn antenna modeling on YouTube
Justin Johnson G0KSC inventor of the LFA (Loop Fed Array) Yagi and BOLPA (Band Optimised Log Periodic Array) Log Periodic antennas amongst others, has added a new YouTube channel to help Hams become proficient in antenna modeling.
This new YouTube channel will provide a set of visual tutorials that will guide the user through antennas modeling packages. We have started a series on exploring EZNEC and will move through 4NEC2, MMANA-gal and on to more sophisticated packages such as Ansys HFSS.’ He went on to say. ‘ Ham Radio is a hobby of experimentation and building antennas that work as good as any you can buy is still possible.
Justin is encouraging ‘how to’ questions which will help shape the direction these tutorials take. You can subscribe to the channel through the link below and are encourage to view and get involved.
W1PJE says
Hi Dan – just a note that the strong Cycle 25 forecast is not accepted by the majority of solar physics types. It’s really a “no one knows” situation. Optimism! (Saw a “10 meters open” post today so we can hope!)