Archive for December, 2007

The Blogroll

December 21st, 2007

I haven’t had a lot of time to update the site lately. Work has been keeping me busy and on the road (er in the air) a lot. I thought I should share some blogs that I like to read in the blogroll…blogs that celebrate the hectic, the ordered, the self, the selfless, the quiet, the cacophony…

The Quiet Way: Dad’s blog about transition from almost 30 years of 8:00-4:30 to a different phase of life. We like the photographs.

The Road to the Horizon: If you’re a ham and you’ve worked any rare DX in the past 15 years, there’s a good chance you’ve worked Peter Cassier, ON6TT, as he travels The Road to the Horizon working for the U.N. or searching for the latest adrenaline kick.  He’s passionate about world problems that don’t get the press they deserve, too.

Those Damn Contesters Have Ruined Ham Radio: We’ve all heard that line before. Scott Robbins, W4PA, who’s a VP at Ten-Tec and an avid contester, shares his candid opinions and experiences on the hobby.

More to come!

Comments Off on The Blogroll »

Posted in site

Drawing conclusions from data

December 21st, 2007

This analysis of a recent sporadic-E event came across the local ham club e-mail list:

http://www.swotrc.net/121607EsEvent.PDF

I study the ionosphere “professionally” right now…so, of course, this piqued my interest. Although I’m an aeronomer, I’ll be the first to admit that the author probably has more experience with sporadic-E than I do. That said, I don’t completely believe him.

He presents several data sets, both from the MST (meso-,strato-,troposphere) region and the ionosphere. Given a lack of “activity” in the troposphere, he concluded that the sporadic-E was caused by a CME (coronal mass ejection) from the Sun. Why don’t I believe him? He invokes no physics (either through citation or explanation) to tie the CME to the formation of sporadic-E. Furthermore, also note by his own presented data that the effect of the CME wasn’t noted at SOHO and GOES until 0200 UT on the 17th, but the Millstone Hill ionosonde was seeing sporadic-E as early as 0000 UT.

The pressure to conclude something from data is immense. Perhaps the most admirable (and underrated) conclusion one can make from data is: I’ve noticed a correlation between X and Y. I believe that relationship X = F(Y) is responsible. I propose the following experiment to test that relationship…

Comments Off on Drawing conclusions from data »

Posted in communication, life