Monthly Archives: January 2009

ALERT Meeting – 1/13/2009

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The next ALERT meeting will be at the National Weather Service in Calera at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009.

Tonight is Jason’s last meeting. He will be missed, please let him know how much we have enjoyed working with him!

Program on Amateur Radio Social Websites is on the Agenda as well.

If you are not able to make the meeting in person try the teleconference.

Every effort will be made to have teleconferencing available for each meeting, to participate:
Please call: (877) 951-0997 and enter participants code 741083.

Social Websites for Amateur Radio

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In the recent months I’ve noticed an Amateur Radio explosion on the Internet. It’s not the same as we’ve seen before with the QRZ forums or eHam.net or even Echolink. Those are great services and are still around today, but new sites like Twitter.com, 73s.org, HamBrief.tv are on the forefront of this new interactivity.

Twitter.com is a free “social networking” and “micro-blogging” service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Some even call it “micro-messaging” which is more the way I think of it.

Based on “Following” principle, you follow people you know or find interesting and then people follow you.

Uses:

1. keep up with friends

2. news aggregation/discovery

3. blog integration

4. Conversations; with the use of @ followed by user name.

How you interact:

1. Web

2. Desktop

3. Mobile (Web/Clients)

4. SMS

Web Explained:

Web is where it began, use the web to create your account customize your profile page. Use it to keep up with your friends.

Desktop Explained:

Desktop clients bring you Twitter as a program you install on your pc.

Twitter clients, there are more twitter clients out there than you can shake a stick at. I personally think TweetDeck is the best out there. Has follower grouping,  easily see your replies and direct messages in separate columns, TwitScoop so you can see common words all users are talking about (great way to see breaking news), and even a custom twitter search column.

Mobile Explained:

Similar to the Desktop if you have a smartphone you can get on twitter’s mobile website or install Twitter clients. Some of the better mobile clients have a nice feature that I don’t see on desktop apps and that is that you start with your last update and move through the timeline instead of having to find your last update and going from there.

SMS Explained:

From your twitter profile you can configure twitter to interact with your cell phone via SMS.  I usually enable this for very important people I follow! Using 40404 you can post updates to twitter via sms.

73s.org created by a fellow Ham Chris Matthieu, N7ICE.

Hams can create an account, customize a profile.

1. You can post status updates (short like twitter).

2. Blog post

3. QSO log entries

4. QSL’ing

5. Post video’s

6. Built in forum

HamBrief.tv created by fellow Ham Chris Matthieu, N7ICE.

Chris host a short Web program about various topics on Amateur Radio. Sometimes he gets demo radios from manufactures that he un-boxes and shows on this site.

That’s it (at least all I can ramble on about).

I hope to demo some of this at the next ALERT meeting hope to see you there!

73,
Russell Thomas, KV4S

UPDATE:
Thanks to Twitter I have 2 more sites to add to the list:

  1. http://www.nh7c.com

  2. http://www.n6aq.com

Both sites appear to give you blogs, classifieds, photo’s, events, and polls ect.
Since I just heard about them. I don’t have many details. As I work with the site I’ll post more details.

January 2009 Newsletter

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ALERT NEWSLETTER – January 2009 Vol. 2 No. 7

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all had a good Christmas & that 2009 treats you well.

The first thing I’ll comment on is the Spotterchat. Activity during the last storms has been good & interactive, with, people chatting & good reports coming in. This I’m glad to see.

As you probably know, the prototype IEMChat will be terminated on February 3 and replaced by the new NWSChat. So, if you are an Operational Member, please be sure to sign up for a NWSChat account by that date. See https://nwschat.weather.gov

On another note, if you are a user of radar provided by the College of Dupage, they have had serious problems with their server, which they are close to resolving. It you haven’t tried the COD radar, once they get it fixed, you should. They provide displays not available on the NWS website. Multiple radar angles, storm relative velocity, storm radial velocity, 1 hour precip, storm total precip, vertical integrated liquid, storm echo tops and more. And, when the NWS site is slow or down due to overload during storms, COD will still be up and will be faster than the NWS site.

A good radar program is Metwise by Ensco Inc. It is a home version of the NWS AWIPS – Advanced Weather Information Processing System. See http://www.extremeforecasting.com/net/details.htm
It’s very good, but, it’s not free. Running $9.95 a month

But, then again neither is Gibson Ridge, which, is perhaps the best thing out there. See http://www.grlevelx.com/ This is very good, but, has a high (to poor folk like me) purchase price.
But, is the most advanced public radar available.

If you want a whole heaping helpin of radars you might check out http://www.freewebs.com/weatherlynx/ and go to Emergency Quicklist.

These are good & they are MY type of price – FREE!


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Mark’s Almanac

January is named for the Roman god Janus, the god of gates and doors, and so openings and beginnings.

January receives more sunlight than December, but the equilibrium between incoming solar heat and the heat radiated into space by the northern snowfields does not peak until late January and early February, six weeks after winter solstice. So the weather continues to cool, with January 8 – 20 being the coldest part of the year.

One of the most tragic outbreaks of cold weather in Alabama occurred January 10-18, 1982, when 20 people died and 300 were injured. 16,000 people were forced into emergency shelters and storm damage totaled 78 million dollars.


At least 5 people perished in the extreme cold of January 19-22, 1985, that rewrote low temperature records over much of Alabama. This storm brought ice accumulations up to one foot in Lauderdale County. Bridges were coated with ice well into Central Alabama and four people were killed in traffic accidents on icy roads.

On Saturday January 19, 2008 Central Alabama enjoyed a rare snowfall, with Trussville getting 0.8 Inch, and Central Alabama getting from 2 to 5 inches from Dallas to Chilton County.

Typically in January there is a 53% chance of up to one inch of snow & a 25% chance of over one inch of snow.

And, just in case global warming goes in reverse this January, here is how to build an igloo:
http://beta.nfb.ca/film/How_to_Build_an_Igloo/

Which proves I spend too much time on the internet.

Barometric pressure is highest in January.

January’s Full Moon is “Wolf Moon” in Native American folklore.

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This month’s meeting will be on January 13 at 7PM at the National Weather Service
Forecast office at the Shelby County Airport.


I hope to see you there.

Mark / WD4NYL
President
ALERT

www.freewebs.com/weatherlynx/