Quote Originally Posted by gypski
Being gadget gal emmie, pleaze let us know how all your other gadgets work during this event if its a strong as they say, or its another millennium dud!!!
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Those Ham Radios still run on tubes don't they?
oh noooo... its all IC's and transistors now. The new rigs are amazing computerized devices that are far and beyond better than the old tube stuff. A lot of that old stuff is still in very good condition and is revered by those who are lucky enough to have them. A good old Collins radio was the standard for a long time that the digital world was not able to compete with... but now, its not even close.

Sometime tomorrow (monday) the x-rays and particles from this solar event will have affected the earths geomagnetic field enough that we will have what is known to us who watch, a major geomagnetic storm. If you have a WWV/WWVH time radio, listen to the report at 18 minutes after the hour. When you hear the A-index (absorption) go up past 7 or 8 we are going to have disruptions in our communications.

With the ionosphere churning trying to dissipate all the added energy, all communications will be reduced to line of sight. Satellite communication having to beam through that disruption will be drastically attenuated by the time the signals get down to us and we will periodically lose the signals from satellites. If you ever wondered why they have like 11 GPS satellites up there, this is one of the reasons. Most of the time you will be able to "see" at least 2 or 3 of them. If you want to learn more about the sun and what is happening right now go here: WM7D dot Net

I would not worry too much about this particular event. It is more X-ray based rather than a proton event which usually are much more disruptive. We know very little about the sun really, but considering that we have only observed this celestial body for a blink of an eye in its lifespan, how could we know much? Many scientists have devoted their lives to this study and at least at this particular time in history we think we understand the 11 year and 27 day cycles of the sun, but its always throwing surprises at us such as the extended minimum on this cycle.

But anyway... this event is nothing. It is a first blast of hopefully a new cycle... we still don't know for sure if the new one has started. If we were ever to have a critical flare that extended out past the first few planets in our system, it would be the end of us... but hey... you would only have 8 minutes to worry about it and then it would be all over. :jointsmile:

Emmie