After the demise of the old Amateur Scientist column I let my
subscription to The Scientific American lapse and have seen no reason
to renew it, since...

Now, back OT... After getting home last night I was working on a
recalcitrant SG-500 amplifier that wanted to hang up in transmit when
keyed by the PTT, but would not hang up when auto sensing of RF drive
was used for keying... My son opened it up and we removed some logic
chips and using the erasor on a #2 yellow pencil, polished the pins...
Whilst he was finishing that I reconfigured the antenna switch box,
checked the SWR on the 160 meter array and then proceeded to help him
with the amp repair by pointing out that he now did not have a "power
on" light on the amp... While he was opening the amp up again
patience I'll get to the point in a moment I spun across the bottom of
160 and listened to a weak CW qso going on.. There was very low static
and it promised to be a good evening if we could get some QRO back on
line...
By now he had found the loose connector inside the amp and reseated
it... We put the amp back on its shelf and connected up... When he
pushed the final coax connector on, the meter on the transceiver went
nuts banging from pin to pin and the receiver was making deafening
popping noises...
"Hey dad, you broke the Orion.", he challenged - he was a bit miffed
over having missed replacing the connector on the amp...
"Mai non, my slow son.", I corrected...
I immediately shut off the power to the Orion and asked him if he had
reversed the power leads to the amp... He indignantly insisted he had
not... He fetched a VOM (which is what I wanted but was too lazy to
get for myself) and proved the polarity was correct... I took the VOM,
unscrewed the antenna coax and put the leads across the PL259...
There was 340,000 microvolts on the connector... His eyebrows went
way up...
"What the hey?", he said...
"It's blowing rain out there.", I said...
"No it's not... It's dead calm out there."
"Go look."
When he pulled open the side door to the shop he was greeted with a
face full of wind and ice cold rain...
OK, now to the point:
There was roughly 3 minutes from the time I was listening to the weak
cw qso to when we unscrewed the coax, and rehooked up to the amp... In
that ~3 minutes it went from essentially no static (well OK, S1-2
static on the meter, which on 160 meters is NO static at all) to just
this side of blowing out the front end of the receiver... There was no
rising static level to herald the approach of a front... It simply was
low static until the moment the first gust of wind swept across our
fields bringing the rain, and huge precip charges on the 130 foot high
antennas...

denny / k8do

Sal M. Onella wrote:
There certainly is something termed galactic noise and most of
it has apparently been ricocheting around the cosmos all this time. It was
first discovered by Bell Labs scientists using a supercooled microwave
amplifier whose noise was higher than expected. They covered the feedhorn
and lo! ... The noise dropped!

http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/a.../msg00336.html retells
part of the story.

Yes, that's what the TV documentary was all about.

There's no way any of us will be affected by galactic background, however,

The same TV documentary said that 1/2 of one percent
of the noise on a blank TV screen is caused by background
radiation from the Big Bang. I was reporting what they
said, not what I had measured.
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

Denny wrote:
It simply was
low static until the moment the first gust of wind swept across our
fields bringing the rain, and huge precip charges on the 130 foot high
antennas...

Sounds like you might believe that precipitation
static exists. :-)
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

Cecil Moore wrote:
Denny wrote:

It simply was
low static until the moment the first gust of wind swept across our
fields bringing the rain, and huge precip charges on the 130 foot high
antennas...


Sounds like you might believe that precipitation
static exists. :-)

Faith is a powerful force for self-delusion.
73,
Tom Donaly, KA6RUH

Cecil Moore wrote:
Denny wrote:
It simply was
low static until the moment the first gust of wind swept across our
fields bringing the rain, and huge precip charges on the 130 foot high
antennas...

Sounds like you might believe that precipitation
static exists. :-)

Cecil:

You might enjoy this article:

http://www.fiz.uni-lj.si/~gorazd/art...dropcharge.pdf

Regards,
JS

"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
. net...

The same TV documentary said that 1/2 of one percent
of the noise on a blank TV screen is caused by background
radiation from the Big Bang.

I buy that. 3K out of approximately 300K on a linear scale is 1%. If it's
50/50 between Big Bang noise and "other," then 1/2 of one percent is spot
on.

Thanks.

.... and so we come full circle. One either believes in p-noise or one does
not. It would be unreasonable for someone who has antennas in an urban
environment and some other environments to believe p-noise exists because
they will not experience p-noise.

If one were to live where it never rains (or it never snows), one would
be disinclined to believe rain (or snow) exists. Many years ago (no, I am
sure I have not told this story before) I was asked by a colleague who lived
in a country south of Miami to tell him about snow. Well, I said, it is a
bit like granisado (flavored, shaved ice) without the flavoring (do not eat
the yellow snow) and heaped up everywhere. He was too polite to indicate
his disbelief.

So, what is your religion?

Warm and fond regards, Mac N8TT

--
J. Mc Laughlin; Michigan U.S.A.
Home:
"Tom Donaly" wrote in message news:Zvzgh.28685

Denny wrote:

It simply was
low static until the moment the first gust of wind swept across our
fields bringing the rain, and huge precip charges on the 130 foot high
antennas...


Sounds like you might believe that precipitation
static exists. :-)

Faith is a powerful force for self-delusion.
73,
Tom Donaly, KA6RUH

J. Mc Laughlin wrote:
... and so we come full circle. One either believes in p-noise or one does
not. It would be unreasonable for someone who has antennas in an urban
environment and some other environments to believe p-noise exists because
they will not experience p-noise.

If one were to live where it never rains (or it never snows), one would
be disinclined to believe rain (or snow) exists. Many years ago (no, I am
sure I have not told this story before) I was asked by a colleague who lived
in a country south of Miami to tell him about snow. Well, I said, it is a
bit like granisado (flavored, shaved ice) without the flavoring (do not eat
the yellow snow) and heaped up everywhere. He was too polite to indicate
his disbelief.

So, what is your religion?

Warm and fond regards, Mac N8TT

--
J. Mc Laughlin; Michigan U.S.A.
Home:
"Tom Donaly" wrote in message news:Zvzgh.28685


Denny wrote:


It simply was
low static until the moment the first gust of wind swept across our
fields bringing the rain, and huge precip charges on the 130 foot high
antennas...


Sounds like you might believe that precipitation
static exists. :-)

Faith is a powerful force for self-delusion.
73,
Tom Donaly, KA6RUH




It never snows around here, but no one disbelieves in snow, Mac.
Cecil's idea of the nature of precipitation static is pretty much
based on what he's made up in his head, and not on measurement and
experimentation. Moreover, he puts words in the mouths of people
who disagree with him, such as the above: if you disagree with him
he'll say you don't _believe_ in p-static, as if it were part of some
ham religion. Actually, it's Cecil's ratiocinations that aren't worth
"believing in." Anyone, even you, can investigate the phenomenon of
p-static with some simple homemade equipment, as I referenced in an
earlier post. Then you can decide for yourself how likely it is that
Cecil's ideas have merit or not.
73,
Tom Donaly, KA6RUH

J. Mc Laughlin wrote:
... and so we come full circle. One either believes in p-noise or one does
not. It would be unreasonable for someone who has antennas in an urban
environment and some other environments to believe p-noise exists because
they will not experience p-noise.

I saw P-static today on the spectrum scope of my
IC-756PRO. I bought a new backup battery and am
allowing it to power my transceiver to see how
long it will last. I tuned it to 1620, WTAW, in
College Station, TX. The typical AM pattern showed
up on the scope. The display has a memory mode where
past signals are remembered in blue while present
signals are displayed in green. It started raining
and after awhile, I went to check on my transceiver.
The display was back to normal as far as the green
display but the blue memory display was constant at
5 divisions completely across the 50 kHz covered by
the display. The carrier was only one division higher
than that blanket of noise caused by the rain. This
was 10 dB per division. I heard no thunder today.

This evidence should be repeatable for anyone with
a spectrum scope on their transceiver.
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

Tom Donaly wrote:
Then you can decide for yourself how likely it is that
Cecil's ideas have merit or not.

They are not my ideas, Tom. Simply do a web search
for precipitation static. There are hundreds of
references including the following definition by
ATIS, accredited by the American National Standards
Institute (ANSI). Check it out for yourself.

http://www.atis.org/tg2k/_precipitation_static.html
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com