Not exactly, but close enough. The ionospheric layers of interest are below those.

Anything you don't want to do, or choose not to spend the time on, you are by definition "unwilling" to do. It's not an insult! Don't be so sensitive! :rolleyes:

Baically, I'm talking about a "directed net". There is a dedicated net control operator. If someone wants to talk, they call net and ask for permission. While the "net is up" idle chatter is discouraged in the interest of keeping the bandwidth open. There shouldn't BE 20 people talking at once unless an asteroid is streaking down to strike the earth, lol.

Example:

Me: "Griggs to net"

[short pause]

Control Op: "Net -- go ahead"

[short pause]

Me: "Everyone hold up, I'm going to go ahead and see if this trail dead ends or not."

[short pause]

Control Op: (repeats in case someone missed it) "Net to all stations, hold up. Griggs is checking the trail."

Generally the net control op is in the middle of the pack, or has such a mongo radio there is never any question about people hearing him.

There are long silences on the radio where people can jump in if something needs to be said. In fact, between each of those transmissions above is a short pause to allow emergency traffic to break in if it should be needful.

That's the basics. As long as everyone stays with the plan, it's simple and works quite well.

SPEAKING of the ionosphere, here's the latest propagation report. We've had some big honking solar flares and more are on the way:


To: JohnGriggs@earthlink.net
Cc: Subscribed ARRL Members: ;
Subject: ARLP003 Propagation de K7RA
Date: Jan 21, 2005 9:18 AM

SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP003
ARLP003 Propagation de K7RA

ZCZC AP03
QST de W1AW
Propagation Forecast Bulletin 3 ARLP003
From Tad Cook, K7RA
Seattle, WA January 21, 2005
To all radio amateurs

SB PROP ARL ARLP003
ARLP003 Propagation de K7RA

This has been a very active week for solar flares and geomagnetic
storms. Average daily sunspot number rose over 57 points this week
to 89, and average daily solar flux was up nearly 43 points to
132.7, when compared to the previous week. The average daily
planetary A index more than doubled, from 17.9 to 36.6.

Huge sunspot 720 provided lots of excitement over the past week.
Clay Evans from Colorado wrote to say that on January 14 he was
driving to work near Boulder, and through the heavily filtered
clouds he could see a large dark spot on the sun. This was probably
sunspot 720.

Two large flares erupted from this sunspot on Saturday, January 15.
Over the next few days the geomagnetic numbers bumped up
dramatically, with a planetary A index for January 17-19 of 63, 72
and 62. The high latitude collage A index was 114, 136 and 106 for
those same three days.

On Monday, January 17 another big flare blasted in our direction.
It peaked around 0950z. As sunspot 720 moves off the center of the
visible solar disk, more flares erupted, including a huge X7-class
event on Thursday, January 20. The energy could sweep past earth
today (January 21). This flare was the largest of the past year and
triggered the largest radiation storm in the current 11 year solar
cycle.

This radiation storm hasn't yet resulted in a geomagnetic storm here
as of the writing of this bulletin on Thursday night. Currently the
prediction is for a planetary A index of 25, 20 and 20 for January
21-23, but this could be higher depending on how direct the
radiation hits earth. With sunspot 720 moving beyond view, daily
solar flux values are expected to dip below 100 around January
23-24.

If you would like to comment or have a tip, email the author at,
k7ra@arrl.net.

For more information concerning propagation and an explanation of
the numbers used in this bulletin see the ARRL Technical Information
Service propagation page at,
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/propagation.html.

Sunspot numbers for January 13 through 19 were 77, 65, 100, 99, 107,
109 and 66 with a mean of 89. 10.7 cm flux was 115.6, 129.8, 144.9,
144.5, 137.5, 124.3 and 132.5, with a mean of 132.7. Estimated
planetary A indices were 13, 12, 22, 12, 63, 72 and 62 with a mean
of 36.6. Estimated mid-latitude A indices were 10, 11, 11, 10, 27,
35 and 31, with a mean of 19.3.
NNNN
/EX

Great! So why not adopt/advocate this sort of thing on your trail rides? Surely you could find one CB rig that's got a well tuned antenna and/or set and put someone in the passenger seat of that truck to act as your net 'controller'. Sounds better than the annarchy we normally seem to have..

Or better yet, just keep off the damned radio unless you have something important to say!

For your type of transmitter that is true. I was thinking of them as a whole. As fragile little humans, we need all the ionoshpere we can get.

I've had van allen belts on the brain because the guy next to me at work thinks the government controls the weather with HAARP and he won't stop talking about it.

Yeah, well it's really cold here and we're getting 6 to 12 inches plus of snow tomorrow, so smack him a good one for me!

I've posted on this for years on various boards. Makes no difference. Not enough care to abide by it so I've simply given up on large rides. Sounds cynical, but my experience is that most won't do it on CB.

How say you all? Is anyone getting this that I ride with and willing to make it work? For small rides it makes no nevermind, generally -- but if Centralia is big in April it could be useful.

Even 10 trucks wasn't so bad in Wharton -- because only a few had CB's, lol!

John, if I'm up there next time, I'll keep my mouth shut and let you do all the talking.

An easy way to seperate BS from important radio traffic is to have two channels. If you want to BS and blab on and on, use FRS-5 or CB 40. Official / important radio traffic can be on FRS-1 or CB-4 or something like that. Hell, if I go, I i will build a cross-link to connect a CB and FRS channel together. :)

I am a licensed radio operator
For my boat's VHF and for my GMRS radios
Both were free, just needed to fill out some paper work and submit to the FCC

A GMRS license is NOT free.

He-he! "Cross band repeater gone horribly wrong!" -- lol. Now we can annoy people on two bands simultaneously! :smile:

An easy way to annoy people into not talking on the radio... I can just set the emergency identifier on my radio for "infinate immpolite retries" and make sure the bitsync packets are enabled. It will sit there squaking over and over and over until everyone gets so annoyed, they turn their radios off. :)

John, I have got to get myself to one of these big trail rides. I'm sure between you, me, and the other matt, we can have a blast with this stuff. Hey, how about packet data? We can send text messages back and forth without having to speak and transpond our locations with APRS!!

lol! Well, when I learn to type and drive... uhh...when I learn to DRIVE anyway, I'll try to do that!

Actually, I had an old Radio Shack Model 100 "laptop" in the 80's and used it on packet. I was an "early adopter" of packet and organized an NDMS (National Disaster Medical System) test where I operated from PHL airport, and the now-defunct Naval Hospital in Philadelphia. We worked in conjunction with the Red Cross and the Navy.

We had ops at Willow Grove Naval Air Station, and PHL, typing in simulated triage data and forwarding it on packet to me. I had an automated setup on a PC that received it into a big file, which I manually cleaned up using Borlands old "Sidekick" (early "multi taaking in DOS, lol) and printed for use in sending data to the Red Cross for use in notifying relatives (well, SIMULATED relatives for our simulated casualties). I used an old comm program called XTALK ("CrossTalk") to receive in the background when I was editing in the foreground.

At the time I was pushing packet for that. The Red Cross agreed to do a parallel test of their usual system: volunteers calling in the triage data over the telephone. The results: there were no errors in the packet based data that was not ALREADY in error on the original triage tag! We did good. The telephone relayed data had a bunch of errors, some critical.

I got my picture (long hair, beard and all) on the ARRL's emergency operations pamphlet sitting at the Model 100, monitoring packets.

Besides portable and monitor work, I also used it mobile, typing one handed. I had a TNC installed permanently in my Saab with a 25 watt Azden 2 meter rig. I used to take a tiny Kenwood HT, and a small Kantronics TNC in my briefcase inside on my consulting jobs, and operate packet from the Model 100 when things were quiet.

That was about 1987 or so, I think. Then my addiction caught up with me again, I ended up selling everything, yada-yada-yada...

But I had 15 minutes of fame and I still have a commendation letter from the commander of the Naval Hospital.

Anyway, talking about mobile packet reminded me of that. Talk about "off topic"! :smile:

I think between the 3 of us, we have a pretty good back up system if NASA ever needs it.

"This is the Centralia convoy calling the international space shuttle, can you tell where this trail goes?"

We might be able to work packet with and omni an repeat via the ISS. It has a packet repeater on it. I'll bring the sat-tracking software and we'll give it a try. Would it not be a hoot to talk truck-to-truck via the ISS???

LOL,, just kidding fellas.

Is that a bad thing?

I'm seriously gonna show this thread to my GF! She'll never give me a hard time about the photo crap again! ;)

Who was it, Bill Gates?...who said, "Be nice to the nerds you meet, you may be working for them someday." -- or something to that effect. :smile: