ALERT NEWSLETTER – September 2014

Hi Everyone, We have exciting news this month. Thanks to the generosity of our served agency, the National Weather Service, we are in the process of upgrading our equipment at K4NWS. We now have new Alinco 2 meter, 220 MHz & 440 MHz radios! Make sure to attend this month’s meeting as we begin the familiarization and training process as we prepare for the upcoming fall severe weather season. We also wish to thank the Birmingham Amateur Radio Club who provided ALERT the Kenwood VHF and UHF radios we have used through the years in the NWS & ALERT’s mission to save lives. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Malicious Interference or When The Trolls Come Marching In At some point in your amateur radio experience you will run into some poor souls who for whatever reason seems to take delight in jamming, interfering and just being a pain in the posterior. In ham speak we call them “lids”. On the internet they would be “trolls”. Either way, the terms fit. They are annoying, but it is a part of ham life & you as a ham or a Net Control Stationneed to know how to handle these situations. Why do people interfere? There are several possibilities. One possibility is that they may not be intentionally interfering at all. They may be barely in range of the repeater and all you get is static or a dead carrier. They may be on another distant repeater and there is just enough of a band opening to key the local repeater. Also, they may have radio trouble or even be accidently keying up. I’ve seen microphones short out and the radio start transmitting. I’ve also seen my cat sit down on a CW key and transmit world-wide, before I threw the shoe at him to shoo him and the FCC away. Sometimes it is someone with a stolen radio and they, not knowing what is going on “act up” or “act out”, having figured out that they can anonymously harass people and hear them react. There are also cases where a ham’s child has gotten hold of Daddy’s radio. Similar to an incident many years ago where a child got the fathers radio and was dispatching police cars all over the Dallas/Fort Worth area. And, doing a nice job of dispatching, said the police. Other times it may be someone who has tried to pass the ham exam, but failed and in frustration wants to retaliate by making everyone else’s life miserable. Sadly more times than I would like to remember, it is an older ham that has become jaded and soured with the ham radio world and is striking out in the only way he feels he can. Finally, it may be someone who for whatever reason just doesn’t like you, or just knowing that they can aggravate the fool out of you, takes great delight in doing so. Regardless of the reasons, there are ways of handling these situations, and ways not to. First we will deal with what NOT to do. 1. Don’t make personal attacks on the person. The person may simply be having radio trouble, and not even realize it. You may be cursing out your best ham friend and not know it. Similar to the situation of someone cutting you off in traffic, you getting angry, passing him and making obscene jesters and then realizing that you have just told your pastor or employer to go to the Infernal Regions. Also, by threatening or attacking the person it just lets him know you are aggravated and that he is accomplishing his goal of annoying you. This boosts his ego. 2. Don’t give the guy some morality lesson or say in a sad voice how he is harming ham radio. He doesn’t care and again it just lets him know that he is succeeding in his attempt to annoy you, which gives him some weird fulfillment. 3. Don’t blame it on the new hams either, and say “when I took my test in 1934 I had to EARN IT and valued my license”. As I mentioned earlier, in my 36 years in ham radio I’ve seen many more instances of it being an older ham interfering rather than one of the newer ones. Operators who for whatever reason simply got disillusioned with the hobby and cared only enough to cause trouble for everyone else. What DO you do in these situations? 1. Simply ignore him. If he can’t get you to respond, he either will assume that he is failing in his attempt to annoy you or figure that his signal is so bad that it is ineffective. In either case he will eventually get tired and give up. So by simply doing nothing, you’ve won the battle. Act, otherwise, and you can become his prime target. 2. If it is a persistent problem, and if your group has practiced “fox hunting”, your group may attempt to locate him. If you do locate him, do not confront him. Not yet. 3. Gather as much evidence as you can. Document everything, such as times & frequencies. Record the incidents. You are gathering evidence for the FCC. 4. After gathering all the evidence you can, the leadership of the group, such as the club president & repeater trustee, might approach the person and let them know, both verbally and in writing, that they are aware of the situation, that you have gathered sufficient evidence and that if the situation does not stop, you will inform the FCC. If they stop, fine, you have won the battle. If not, proceed to step 5. 5. Inform the FCC of the situation, turning in all of the evidence. The may act slowly, but, they will eventually act. It is much more preferable to handle these situations using the “high road” rather than the “low road” such as pinning coax, or having a physical altercation. Though the latter may feel better in the short term, that will quickly fade away, as soon as you see the flashing blue lights, him having called the police and having you arrested. Just know that eventually lids, trolls and nuts give up or get caught, and that you will have peace once again. That is until the next full moon arises and the next nut in line gains an inspiration for instigation. Then reread this article. ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. Mark’s Almanac September is the ninth month of the year and the seventh month of the Roman calendar, which is where the month gets its name. Temperatures are still hot at the beginning of the month, but, by months end, fall will definitely be felt. Noticeable in September will be the thickening of the cat’s fur, as she begins growing her winter coat & the drift of Yellow Giant Sulphur Butterflies as they migrate towards Florida. Weather starts shifting from the summer to autumn pattern and then back again. Storm activity resembles the August pattern, but the Bermuda High starts shifting southward and begins weakening, which will weaken the blocking effect it has had which prevented fronts from invading from the northwest. September is the peak of the hurricane season, the actual peak being on September 10. This peak coincides with the time of “syzygy”, when the combination of the solar and lunar gravity and autumnal equinox combine to provide the highest astronomical tides of the year. Add a hurricane’s storm surge on top of this and you can have incredibly destructive flooding. Looking towards the sky, Mercury is hidden deep in the sunset. Our neighbor, Venus shines brightly low in the east-northeast at dawn, with Jupiter hovering above. Venus is drifting lower in the sky, while Jupiter is moving higher. Mars and Saturn glow in the Southwest at dusk. Mars is the lower of the pair. Uranus, passing through Pisces is in the southeast after midnight. Neptune, drifting through Aquarius is in the south after midnight. It is currently at its closest approach to Earth, but, due to its extreme distance, 2.5 billion miles, it appears as a tiny blue dot in all but, the most powerful telescopes. On Monday August 26 NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft crossed Neptune’s orbit, the last major event before its July 14, 2015 arrival at Pluto. September’s Full Moon will occur September 9 at 8:38 PM CDT. This month’s moon is “Full Corn Moon” in Native American folklore because corn is harvested this time of year. This year it is also “Harvest Moon”. Harvest moon get its name because the moon is larger and seems to rise at almost the same time every night, which allowed harvesting to continue on into the night. Most believe that Harvest Moon is always in September; however this isn’t always the case. Harvest Moon is actually the full moon closest to the Autumnal Equinox, and so occasionally it can occur with October “Hunters Moon”. This year’s Harvest Moon is the final of 2014’s three Supermoons. Fall begins at Autumnal Equinox on September 23 at 9:29 PM CDT, when the Sun crosses directly over the equator and night and day is approximately the same length. One term that occasionally pops up is “equinoctial storms”. Which are severe storms in North America and the UK that supposedly accompany the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Where this belief originated is obscure. Some say perhaps from the 1700’s when sailors were greeted by West Indies hurricanes, or due to the coincidence of the first fall severe storms sometimes coming in the latter half of September. At any rate, statistics show no evidence to support the belief. On this date, if there is sufficient solar activity, and you are away from city lights, the aurora may possibly be seen, as the Equinox dates are the two most favored times of the year for auroral sightings. New Moon occurs September 24 at 1:14 AM CDT. High in the Southern night sky an asterism or a group of stars appearing clustered together, but not actually gravitationally bound will be seen that resembles a teapot. This is the Teapot of Sagittarius. To the naked eye, the Teapot is roughly the size of your fist at arm’s length. Above the spout of the Teapot lies a band of light, the Large Sagittarius Star Cloud. A pair of binoculars will reveal a sea of stars and faint grayish patches, the largest of which is the Lagoon Nebula. When you look upon these nebulae you are seeing stars in the process of being born. The spout, which is tilting and pouring to the right, also points towards the galactic center of the Milky Way, located just beyond the Large Sagittarius Star cloud, but largely hidden by the dust clouds, which lie along the plane of the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy. Among the night stars 1743 planets have been confirmed beyond our star system as of August 27, 2014. Could there be life among them? Could that life be thinking about us? Kindly or otherwise? I know I’m going to be brushing up on those Conversational Klingon CDs I bought, just in case. It always pays to be prepared. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Our next ALERT meeting is September 9th. If for some reason you cannot attend the meeting in person, you can still participate via telephone. The teleconference number is 1-877-951-0997 & and the participant code is 741083. Hope to see you there! Mark / WD4NYL ALERT http://weatherlynx.webs.com