6pmnet - December 2020 Net Topics

New Year Wishes

By James H. Cavanaugh, KD1FW

As this new year comes forth and the old year departs

Anticipation of better days do come to our hearts

That they will be blessed and totally virus free

So all can reunite with friends and family

May the bitter differences that have flawed this passing year

Fade away to dull memories and swiftly disappear

As we put our grievances aside and through healing we’ll weather

Making peace with one another, striding forward together

Hoping that a feeling of unity we can retrieve

Becoming one nation again this New Year’s Eve

Topics December 30

How far we’ve come! Emma Snodgrass created a sensation on December 29,1852 by showing up in Boston wearing pants. She was mocked, arrested and sent home to her father in New York City, only to return again and again. Each time the police found her out, arrested her and sent her home. She became national news. Newspapers described her as ‘the wanderer in man’s apparel,’ the ‘foolish girl who goes around in virile toggery’ and ‘an eccentric female who roams about town.’ Emma was the pretty, petite 17-year-old daughter of a New York City police officer. Her audacious pranks ‘turned the heads of the Boston editors,’ reported the Daily Dispatch of Richmond, Va. For a few months, newspapers reported Emma Snodgrass arrests and appearances as frequently as Elvis sightings.

https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/emma-snodgrass-arrested-wearing-pants/

When the first weather and research station opened at Eureka, Nunavut, Canada in 1947, amateur radio was the most reliable way for staff to make any kind of personal contact with the south. That’s especially since mail didn’t always make it to the remote posting.

As communication became more reliable, and satellite internet came to the High Arctic, amateur radio had become largely obsolete in Eureka, until researcher Pierre Fogal and his colleague Alex Tikhomirov started operating as amateurs from the station in their spare time. But running amateur radio in the High Arctic isn’t always easy. The wind and frost and ice that can build up there is very destructive to antennas. In the fall, radio operators have to worry about northern lights, which will absorb, scatter and bend radio frequencies.

2017 marked the 70th anniversary of amateur radio at Eureka. In recognition of this, Fogal, and Tikhomirov were given a license to run a new station at Eureka. That’s the station VY0ERC. There are now around 16 members of the Eureka Radio Club, and the two founders are always looking for more members, and more contacts. The station has logged over 10,000 contacts.

Topics December 28

On December 25, 1914 the legendary “Christmas Truce” took place with a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires on the WWI battlefields between British and German troops. Late on Christmas Eve 1914, men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) heard German troops in the trenches opposite them singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small fir trees along their trenches. Messages began to be shouted between the trenches. The following day, British and German soldiers met in no man's land and exchanged gifts, took photographs and some played impromptu games of football. They also buried casualties and repaired trenches and dugouts. After Boxing Day, meetings in no man's land dwindled out. Link to movie, "All's Quiet on the Western Front" de K1JBD

In reference to this truce “Snoopy’s Christmas” was a song written in 1967 and sung by the Royal Guardsmen. Snoopy goes out to fight the Red Baron on Christmas Eve. The Baron has Snoopy at his mercy after a long dogfight, but instead of shooting him down he forces Snoopy to land and offers Snoopy a holiday toast. Afterward, Snoopy and the Red Baron fly their separate ways, "each knowing they'd meet on some other day".

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sh-J4GSPgAM&feature=share

Topics December 23

Global Positioning System - The precursor of the GPS was called TRANSIT and developed in the 1960s to guide nuclear submarines. The modern version of GPS (originally Navstar GPS) was a project by the U.S. Department of Defense but was intended for use only by the U.S. military.

In 2000, President Clinton granted the use of GPS for non-military purposes, and now everybody can utilize the navigational system for various purposes like finding the best spot for fishing to tracking the movement of whales. However, there are some limitations to the public GPS — the most accurate Global Positioning System is still owned by the U.S. government.

I remember when I’d be so nervous about driving to places I wasn’t familiar with … struggling with paper maps and notes I wrote to guide me. It was even worse when I didn’t have a cell phone let alone one with a GPS app. Now I wouldn’t go anywhere long distance without my phone on charge and running Google maps.

The Great Blizzard of 1947 was a record-breaking snowfall that began on Christmas without prediction and brought the northeastern United States to a standstill. The snowstorm was described as the worst blizzard after 1888.[1] The storm was not accompanied by high winds, but the snow fell silently and steadily. By the time it stopped on December 26th, measurement of the snowfall reached 26.4 inches (67.1 cm) in Central Park in Manhattan with drifts exceeding 10 feet. Luckily this Christmas we know a storm is coming and it’s supposed to be just rain and wind.

Net Topics December 21

The Winter Solstice

The concept of tiny robots that can heal (or kill) people is another common feature of Sci-Fi films. From the Borg in "Star Trek" to "Red Dwarf" (overdoing repairing Lister) nanobots have been, until now, a believable, yet seemingly unobtainable dream for sci-fi fans. As it turns out, they are currently being developed by various groups around the world.

The idea is that these tiny robots will be injected into the human body to monitor someone's health from the inside. Some will also come equipped with tiny surgical instruments that could actually repair damaged organs in situ. If achieved, and some estimate it may be within the next decade, this might mean you never need to see a doctor ever again!

Fantastic Voyage Trailer

Out of 2,200 onboard at least 763 American soldiers from the Army's 66th Infantry Division drowned in the English Channel on Christmas Eve 1944 when a German U-boat torpedoed their troopship, the SS Léopoldville, just off the coast of France. It took news of the attack more than an hour to reach shore, causing a critical delay in getting rescue boats to the scene. Military officials shrouded the disaster in official secrecy at the time, and it was largely forgotten by historians.

Net Topics December 16

Japan is the snowiest place on Earth. Hakuba, Japan saw 600″ of snow in only 10 weeks in 2015. We can’t even begin to image how much fell 6,000 feet above town in the high mountain. “In the mountains of northern Japan, there is a place called Sukio-Onsen. In a typical year, you’ll see 50-60 feet of snow, some years 70-80. The mountains of Japan are so snowy because they are susceptible to a cold Siberian wind that slams into the mountains of Japan, forces the air to rise, and that wrings out tremendous amounts of snowfall. It’s like our lake effect snow in the US, but on a much bigger scale.

So how did everyone do in the storm yesterday?

I spent yesterday morning shoveling only to have snow drifts blow right back in. Another tenant in the building spent 6 hours shoveling from around 4:30pm to 11:00pm. This afternoon tenants couldn’t make it up Friend Ct to get home and others couldn’t break free from the ice in the parking lot to get out.

Net Topics December 16

December 16, 1773 – in Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three British tea ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. “No taxation without representation!”

Tonight December 16th, 2020: Winter Storm Gail Warning

Winter Storm Gail will impact parts of the mid-Atlantic and the northeastern U.S. tonight with heavy snow expected in major cities New York and Boston. The storm is being produced by a combination of a deep upper-level trough swinging across the mid-South, an area of low pressure developing off the southeast coast, and a strong arctic high-pressure system located over southern Quebec, Canada. These elements will produce an expanding area of snow that will spread over the Ohio Valley, central Appalachia and northern mid-Atlantic. It is expected to hit here in Gloucester around 7:00pm tonight and end around 1:00pm tomorrow. A foot or more of snow is expected. NWS Forecast

Net Topics December 14

On December 14, 1907 the 7 masted schooner Thomas W. Lawson, built in Quincy, MA in 1902, was bound from Philadelphia for London carrying tons of crude oil. She was approaching the Isles of Scilly in poor visibility, when she let go her bow anchors with the intention of riding out a gathering storm. The captain refused several requests to abandon his ship. At night, when the storm got worse, both her anchors parted and she was left to the mercy of the seas. The Captain advised his crew to climb on the rigging, but when she went aground, all of her masts came down and she capsized, killing most of the crew. The Captain and the engineer, however, jumped into the sea, before she capsized. At daybreak, the upturned keel of the Thomas W. Lawson could be seen. There were only two survivors, the captain and engineer out of a crew of 18 and the pilot.

Click on photo above for more details.

Charles Elwood (Chuck) Yeager died Monday December 7th, 2020 at the age of 97. He was a United States Air Force general, a WWII fighter ace, and a record-setting test pilot who in 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight.

Click on photo above for more details.

Also, See This

The Spirit of Christmas

By James H Cavanaugh,KD1FW

Traveling forth toward familiar places

Watching joy showing upon children's faces

Smells of cinnamon and pine make you pause

Recalling when YOU believed in Santa Claus

Angels, lights and ornaments, decorating trees

Carols heard on the cold winter breeze

Baby Jesus in a manger, outside the church

Depicting where three wise men ended their search

Feelings of peace and love that you merit

All come together within Christmas spirit

Net Topics December 7 Postponed to 12/11 - Due to Repeater Issue- CU Friday!

December 7th, 1941 “a day that will live in infamy.” - Japan launched a surprise dawn attack using midget submarines, 350 bombers and torpedo carrying planes targeting warships, aircraft and military installations on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and declared war on Britain and the United States. The attack destroyed two battleships, one minelayer, two destroyers with the loss of more than 2,300 US servicemen The next day US president, Franklin D Roosevelt, said in Congress in his declaration of war “I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”

Frank Reichelt was an Austrian-born French tailor who was well known during his time for his inventions. Posthumously, though, Reichelt is best known for his fatal 1912 leap from the Eiffel Tower. Having obtained permission from the Parisian police to test his new parachute suit from the landmark, Reichelt announced that the only dummy that would repel from the building was himself. Upon jumping, the suit failed and he fell to his end, in what can be considered one of the more— while unsurprising— unusual deaths of his time.

Net Topics December 4

I was looking for unusual inventions again and I found a light that levitates. Flyte is a wireless light bulb which floats and rotates in the air above a small wooden base in which magnets are embedded. It looks like an Edison bulb. This lamp uses surprisingly little energy: if it’s on for 6 hours per day, the lamp can work for as long as 22 years. There are different models of this and one is named after Nikola Tesla and is called the “Nikola.

Ron Pace AA4RP from Georgia has found another use for his 50’ tower. A tomato plant has been climbing the tower and has now grown to about 12’ tall. He had to use a ladder to pick some tomatoes, which have been flourishing in their new environment.

Net Topic December 2

The Can Am Crown sled dog race is held yearly the first Saturday in March… the same time of the year as the Iditarod. It starts Saturday morning at Fort Kent, Maine and usually ends back at Fort Kent late the following Monday evening. The event brings together dogs and mushers from throughout the United States and Canada and thousands of spectators line Main Street to watch the start of the race.

It’s a 250 mile journey thru the north Maine woods near the Canadian border. There are 4 checkpoints where participants can rest, eat, and warm up. In March temperatures there can range from a sunny 20 degrees F to below zero with wind chills of -40 degrees F. There are over 20 amateur radio operators dispersed along the course. It takes year round planning, tons of ham radio equipment, repeaters, cross banding, simplex, HF communications, and 4 net controllers to keep it running day and night. This race has been the premier dog sled race in New England for 28 years but sadly, due to Covid 19, the race has been canceled for 2021.

Click Photo for more........