Subj : Amateur Radio Newsline (A) To : All From : Daryl Stout Date : Thu Sep 02 2021 19:49:48 Amateur Radio Newsline Report 2288 for Friday, September 3rd, 2021 Amateur Radio Newsline Report Number 2288, with a release date of Friday, September 3rd, 2021, to follow in 5-4-3-2-1. The following is a QST. US hams respond to a devastating hurricane in the Gulf region. Solar storms are called a threat to the internet - and the Newsline team suffers a personal loss. All this and more, as Amateur Radio Newsline Report Number 2288, comes your way right now. *** BILLBOARD CART ** US HAMS STEP IN AS HURRICANE SWEEPS GULF REGION JIM/ANCHOR: We begin this week with Hurricane Ida. The storm battered the state of Louisiana, and the Gulf region in the US -- and hams were ready. Here's Randy Sly, W4XJ, with that report. RANDY: As Hurricane Ida approached the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday morning, August 29, amateur radio operators were already active with the Hurricane Watch Net (HWN), VOIP Hurricane Net, and local emergency nets in the affected areas. It was the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, when this new contender headed inland near Grand Isle, Louisiana. With winds over 148 mph at landfall, Ida devastated areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, before moving north and east, dumping torrential rains as it went. This Category 4 hurricane left four people dead, and millions of utility customers without power. Bobby Graves, KB5HAV, net manager of Hurricane Watch Net, told Amateur Radio Newsline that weather models warned him this storm would be serious. The net was active for 26 hours, with 47 reporting stations. More than 120 reports were sent to the National Hurricane Center through WX4NHC. According to Rob Macedo (Mah-see-doh), KD1CY, director of operations for the VOIP Hurricane Net, the net provided the hurricane center with additional details as hams checked in with traffic from weather stations, social media outlets, public safety outlets and contacts in the affected areas. Amateur radio and government also worked hand-in-hand as FEMA declared Channels 1 and 2 on 60 meters available for interoperability as late as September 6th if needed. As before, the FCC authorized a higher symbol rate than the 300-baud limit for hams' hurricane-related transmissions. If you would like to volunteer to help the American Red Cross, or any of the amateur radio groups mentioned in this report, please see contact information in the printed version of this week's newscast on our website, arnewsline.org For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Randy Sly, W4XJ. For the American Red Cross, Contact Steve Irving, DST Lead, Louisiana Region, Cell: (225) 933-4993, steve.irving2@redcross.org. For the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, Auxiliary Communications Support and Amateur Radio Station WB5LHS, matthew.anderson3@redcross.org For the Hurricane Watch Net (www.hwn.org), Bobby Graves, KB5HAV - Net Manager, kb5hav@hwn.org For the VOIP Hurricane Net, Rob Macedo, KD1CY - Director of Operations rmacedo@rcn.com ** SOLAR STORMS CALLED THREAT TO INTERNET JIM/ANCHOR: Most of us know what solar storms can do to our plans for DX or even a friendly ragchew when they mess with the earth's geomagnetic field. Well, according to one California researcher, internet-users could soon be sharing our pain. Here's Ralph Squillace, KK6ITB, to explain. RALPH: If you rely on the internet as much as you rely on your amateur radio, you may have twice as many reasons for being wary of space weather, according to a California professor. Sangeetha [Son-Geeta] Abdu [Ab-Doo] Jyothi [Joe-Tee], a computer scientist as the University of California, Irvine, believes that major solar storms are capable of compromising the internet's global infrastructure -- and probably will. It's not that a coronal mass ejection can disable the fibre optic cables that form the foundation of the internet. They can't: Those cables remain unaffected and local internet service would remain intact. But, the researcher said, a global network of undersea communications cables that boost the internet's international signals -- the equivalent of repeaters -- would suffer directly from electromagnetic fluctuations brought on by severe solar eruptions. In a recently released research paper, the professor speculated that this could knock nations off the internet, isolating them for as long as several weeks. The professor presented her findings in a paper in late August at a conference held virtually by the Association for Computer Machinery. She noted that astrophysicists say there is a likelihood of between 1.6 percent and 12 percent that a strong enough storm of this sort will occur within the next decade. For many, her findings describe a future version of the Carrington Event, a geomagnetic storm in September of 1859, that damaged the earth's ozone layer, and disrupted telegraph lines around the world. For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Ralph Squillace, KK6ITB. (FROM JENNY TUPPER, the DAILY MAIL, ACM SIGCOMM) --- SBBSecho 3.14-Win32 * Origin: The Thunderbolt BBS - Little Rock, Arkansas (454:1/33) .