BREAK HERE: Time for you to identify your station. We are the Amateur Radio
Newsline, heard on bulletin stations around the world, including W3BN, the
2-meter repeater of the Reading Radio Club in Reading, Pennsylvania, on
Friday evenings at 8 p.m. local time.
***
AROUND THE WORLD AND BACK AGAIN
DON/ANCHOR: The Spirit has landed. With the single-engine aircraft's
wheels once again on the ground, rest assured that the traveling days
of pilot Brian Lloyd, WB6RQN, aren't over just yet. He completed his
around-the-world tribute flight to Amelia Earhart, with a July 31
landing at California's Oakland Airport. The 80th anniversary flight
honoring Earhart's final trip is in the books. While logging all those
miles and all those QSOs too, Brian faced some technical as well as bureaucratic
challenges. As of production deadline at Newsline, he was
on his way safely home to Spring Branch, Texas with a stopover at
Earhart's Atchison, Kansas birthplace -- and thus, Brian Lloyd pays
Amelia Earhart his final tribute.
**
SUN CAN'T ECLIPSE EMERGENCY SERVICES
DON/ANCHOR: Here comes the sun - or rather, there goes the sun as an
eclipse moves in on Aug. 21. So what happens to emergency
communications? Jim Damron, N8TMW, has this report.
JIM: As the saying goes, "when all else fails, ham radio." In this
case, with the coming of a total solar eclipse, what's going to fail -
in a manner of speaking - is the sun itself, at least for a short while.
Emergency dispatch centers around central Oregon aren't taking any
chances. Oregon is expected to have a 70-mile-wide zone of totality when
the eclipse happens. According to a report in the Central Oregon Bulletin,
a number of emergency services personnel are already making plans that
include area amateur radio operators, so that emergency calls still get through.
Nathan Garibay, a sergeant with the Deschutes County sheriff's office,
and emergency services manager for the county, has coordinated with Don
Shurtleff WB0DVS, information officer for the Deschutes County Amateur
Radio Emergency Service, and the High Desert Amateur Radio Group.
Shurtleff's team will staff a joint-information center throughout the
eclipse, joining others from emergency response teams from around the
region. If necessary, hams will be sent to locations, such as busy
highways, to make sure emergencies are noted and reported.
Meanwhile, to the north in Jefferson County, Mark Carman, KI7MRC, the
emergency management coordinator there, will staff a communications
center, where eight hams will be checking in from their designated
patrol areas. Their job will be to give realtime traffic reports either
by foot patrol, golf cart, or any other means that doesn't involve an
automobile.
Mark Carman told the Bulletin newspaper [QUOTE] "We're going to have
hams up and down the Highway 97 corridor." [ENDQUOTE]
For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Jim Damron, N8TMW.
(THE BULLETIN OF CENTRAL OREGON)
**
ECLIPSE EXPERIMENT SHOULD SHED SOME LIGHT
DON/ANCHOR: This month's eclipse is also turning into an amateur radio
project for a college team based in Virginia. We hear more from Mike
Askins, KE5CXP.
MIKE: A senior at Virginia Tech is using her Blacksburg, Virginia
backyard as a kind of propagation laboratory. Magda Moses, KM4EGE, is
part of a team of students and faculty who - like so many others - are
eagerly awaitng the solar eclipse on Aug. 21. The team's backyard
experiment is focused on a different kind of special effects that
involve measuring - not viewing. The group is hoping to study changes
that occur in the ionosphere during the total solar eclipse. It is the
first such eclipse to be visible from the U.S. since 1979.
The team is being led by Greg Earle, W4GDE, a professor of electrical
engineering at Virginia Tech. Faculty and students will be monitoring
radio waves from locations in Oregon, where the eclipse will begin,
Kansas, the eclipse's mid-point and South Carolina, as the eclipse
departs.
Magda's backyard has been outfitted with four pole-mounted antennas.
The team will analyze data they collect about how radio waves behave
when the moon blocks the sun's radiation from entering the ionosphere -
exactly what will be happening as the eclipse occurs.
Those few moments are the students' only chance to be doing this as
undergraduates: the next such eclipse won't be happening until 2024.
For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Mike Askins, KE5CXP.
(THE ROANOKE TIMES)
**
IN ILLINOIS, A SPECIAL SOLAR EVENT
DON/ANCHOR: Meanwhile, another group of eclipse-minded experimenters
will be testing the layers of the ionosphere as well on Aug. 21. The
Lewis & Clark Radio Club, K9HAM, will set up a special event station
in Riverview Park in Alton, Illinois, and attempt to work as many
stations as possible between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
A report in Illinois' Telegraph newspaper said that the event's
chairman, John Nell, K9JDN, considers it a to be a "citizens'
scientific experiment." In other words, they'll use the momentary
darkness to shed some light on things -- or hope to, anyway.
***
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