As the title says, also confirmed this morning is the card from Al Dhahran Island, IOTA AS-190.
Many thanks and Happy Christmas guys!
Category - Blog
Thanks for the prompt dispatch of the NH8S Qsl cards which arrived in the mail today.
Please to be another DXCC confirmed on paper 😉 Latest info from NH8S;
”Craig and I would like to thank everyone who worked us from Swains. We made 105,500 qso’s which made a lot of hams happy. This is not a record but something we and the team are very proud of. We had a great time but are glad to be back home with our families.
This was truly a remarkable trip in many ways. We are very proud of our team as they performed remarkably well under unbearable heat. As you may know by now, it was 125° F on the beach in the sun. To put up antennas in the loose sand and heat, was quite a challenge. During the duration of the trip, the crew walked many miles to get to the operating stations four times a day. Then they worked the endless pileups, which can be stressful. Never did they complain about the job before them, making qso’s in those hot tents. Every crew member experienced some type of heat reaction at one time or another. Some members endured other injuries as well, and two were hospitalized, so we had our challenges. Everyone is home and fine now.”
Just when you thought Christmas was over: At the end of the day on Dec. 25th, a pair of holiday lights will pop out of the deepening twilight. Jupiter and the Moon are having a Christmas conjunction.
It’s a beautiful apparition, visible all around the globe. Even city dwellers, who often miss astronomical events because of light pollution, can see the show. Separated by less than 2 degrees, the bright pair will beam right through urban lights.
For anyone who gets a telescope for Christmas, the timing is perfect. Jupiter and the Moon are among the most satisfying targets for backyard optics. A quick sweep of the telescope from Jupiter to the Moon and back again will reveal Jupiter’s storms and cloud belts, the Moon’s mountains and impact craters, and of course the four Galilean satellites circling the giant planet like a miniature solar system.
Jupiter’s trademark Great Red Spot will also be on display–and it is worth a look. Astronomers recently announced that the enormous swirling storm, twice as wide as the planet Earth, is “spinning up.”
But you don’t need a telescope to enjoy the show. Step outside at sunset on Dec. 25th and look east. After all, Christmas isn’t really over until you’ve seen the holiday lights!
A new ScienceCast video previews the Christmas-night conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter. Play it
Can I take the opportunity to wish all my followers a very Merry Christmas from all at ‘Chez OXO’
I hope everyone has a nice Christmas however you celebrate it and I hope that 2013 is a peaceful New Year to all. A big thanks to all that have helped me in anyway over the last 12 months and indeed to all the users of M0OXO OQRS. I try to keep M0OXO.com website up to date as much as possible and vary the topics as I feel at the time. These do not necessarily stick to the radio hobby directly but somewhere around the World I hope someone finds them of interest.
All the best, have a good few days and catch you on the other side!
73 from Charles, Debbie, Laura, Luke, Alex & Jack !
Now that the GB1WH event has ended, here is a message from the station operator;
Hi all,
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who donated to the hospice or simply called in to say hello. This is without doubt the most worthwhile SES I’ve been involved with. So with money raised for the Hospice and over a thousand calls in the log I can safely say it’s been a great success. Together we’ve raised awareness and funds for this great charity, and also promoted our great hobby.
73 de Ian M0IAA es GB1WH
Qsl Cards for GB1WH are available from M0OXO OQRS
Eham Reviews.
Eham is a fantastic source of honest and helpful information when buying Amateur radio equipment. If you have not already left a review would you be able to spare me 5 minutes of your time. Just a few lines is enough, it all helps. If you have already left me a review, many thanks for your time and comments.
To follow the Eham review please click the link below.
http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/8786
Many thanks to you all for your purchase of my version of the Hexbeam, I hope you get many more years of chasing DXing with it.
If you have any issues in the future please do not hesitate to contact me.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Healthy & Prosperous New Year
73’s Ant MWØJZE
V63PR Qsl Card gratefully received today from Yoshi JJ8DEN.
Falalop Island on Ulithi Atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia was not a new Country for me having worked it on several bands but the IOTA (OC-078) adds another confirmation to the list.
MØOXO IOTA #549 worked, #477 confirmed
On December 21, 2012 Mayan Culture will celebrate the beginning of a new cycle in your calendar, an event that occurs every 5125 years.
For that reason members of the Radio Club Cancun, A.C. will be transmitting from the Piste Yucatan, a Maya community place where the archaeological site of Chichen Itza, is located. They will also be active from the Riviera Maya, at the archaeological site of Tulum, Mexico with special call 4A0MAYA.
The event runs from the 19th to 23rd December 2012 on 80 thro 6m Bands using SSB, PSK-31 and RTTY Modes
The special Award for working 4AØMAYA on 3 or more bands can be seen in the image above. (Click para ver el diploma)
Carlson is a hard-nosed scientist–a radio astronomer who earned his degree studying distant galaxies. He became interested in the 2012 phenomenon in the early 70s when he attended a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and learned about the lost civilization of the Maya.
Where the rain forests of Mesoamerica now stand, a great civilization once flourished. The people of Maya society built vast cities, ornate temples, and towering pyramids. At its peak around 800 A.D., the population numbered more than 2,000 people per square mile in the cities — comparable to modern Los Angeles County. The Maya mastered astronomy, developed an elaborate written language, and left behind exquisite artifacts.
Most compelling to Carlson was the Maya’s expansive sense of time. “The times Mayas used dwarf any time scales currently used by modern astronomers,” he explains. “According to our science, the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago.
There are dates and time references in Mayan ruins that stretch back a billion billion times farther than that.”
The Maya Long Count Calendar was designed to keep track of such long intervals. “It is the most complex calendar system ever developed by people anywhere.”
Written using modern typography, the Long Count Calendar resembles the odometer in a car. It’s a modified base-20 system in which rotating digits represent powers of 20 days. Because the digits rotate, the calendar can “roll over” and repeat itself; this repetition is key to the 2012 phenomenon.
What caused the fall of the Maya? Using NASA data, one archeologist believes he has found the answer.
According to Maya theology, the world was created 5125 years ago, on a date modern people would write “August 11, 3114 BC.” At the time, the Maya calendar looked like this: 13.0.0.0.0
On Dec. 21, 2012, it is exactly the same: 13.0.0.0.0
In the language of Maya scholars, 13 Bak’tuns or 13 times 144,000 days elapsed between the two dates. This was a significant interval in Maya theology, but, stresses Carlson, not a destructive one. None of the thousands of ruins, tablets, and standing stones that archeologists have examined foretell an end of the world.
Modern science agrees. NASA experts recently gathered in a Google hangout to review their own findings with the public.
Don Yeomans, head of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program, stated that no known asteroids or comets are on a collision course with Earth.
Neither is a rogue planet coming to destroy us. “If there were anything out there like a planet headed for Earth,” said NASA astrobiologist David Morrison, “it would already be [one of the] brightest objects in the sky. Everybody on Earth could see it. You don’t need to ask the government, just go out and look. It’s not there.”
Lika Guhathakurta, head of NASA’s Living with a Star Program, says the sun is not a threat, either. “The sun has been flaring for billions of years–long before the Maya even existed–and it has never once destroyed the world.”)
“Right now the sun is approaching the maximum of its 11-year activity cycle,” she added, “but this is the wimpiest solar cycle of the past 50 years. Reports to the contrary are exaggerated.”
What would an ancient Maya think about all this hoopla? Carlson believes he knows the answer.
“If we could time warp a Maya to the present day, they would say that Dec. 21, 2012, is a very important date. Many Maya believed that their gods who created the world 5125 years ago would return. One of them in particular, an enigmatic deity named Bolon Yokte’ K’uh, would conduct old rites of passage, to set space and time in order, and to regenerate the cosmos.” The world would be refreshed, not destroyed.
“I have been waiting to experience this day for more than 30 years,” he says.
For him, “experiencing Dec. 21, 2012” means visiting the Maya homeland in the Yucatan, and thinking back to the height of Maya civilization, when ancient humans contemplated expanses of time orders of magnitude beyond modern horizons.
And, of course, appreciating the fact that The World Didn’t End Yesterday.
Between 20-27 March 2013, a team of British hams will be active from Easter Island on all bands 160m to 10m, mainly CW. We will run the HF bands but we also plan to work challenging paths on the low bands, emphasis on Europe.
We are using Elecraft K3s, small PAs and vertical antennas. Depending on the space available we will use a beverage or flag for RX on the low bands.
Club Log uploads and LoTW uploads will occur daily and OQRS will be available.
Team Members are – Michael G7VJR, Nigel G3TXF, John G4IRN, Martin G3ZAY
Log search here 