eHam.net News

///////////////////////////////////////////
Radio Buffs Young and Old Raise Antennas for Hamfest:

Posted: 18 Jul 2016 06:05 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/37203


FRANKFORD -- It sat on the end of a table, electric cord wrapped neatly
around its middle.
"Five dollars. It's yours. Restore, keep as is," said the man behind the
table as he walked over to another customer. The woman turned to the older
man, spoke quietly, and minutes later fished a bill out of her
wallet. "Done," said the man who earlier had been making musical tones and
turning dials trying to play the scales. The seller identified himself
as "N2GPH." It's a tradition among amateur radio hobbyists that they
identify themselves by their federal amateur license call letters. When
talking on-air to each other, whether a neighbor or someone halfway around
the world, the use of call letters is necessary, so it has become
traditional to use the handle in face-to-face conversations. And Sunday, at
the 38th annual Hamfest at Sussex County Fairgrounds, there were a lot of
greetings of letter/number combinations. Many people drove cars with
call-sign vanity plates; wore shirts with call signs on name tags or
embroidered on club shirts. There were even hats with call signs and the
door prize winners often were called over the loudspeaker system by a call
sign.


///////////////////////////////////////////
Earth-Sized Sunspots are Moving Across the Face of the Sun Right Now:

Posted: 18 Jul 2016 06:04 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/37202


After some relatively quite weeks, the sun has awakened again with a large
group of sunspots moving across the Earth-facing side of our closest star.
The dark sunspots are active regions of the sun that can shoot out solar
flares, radiation spewed out from the sun's surface which can sometimes
unleash large bursts of solar plasma out into the solar system. According
to space scientist Karl Battams, the larger sunspots are about the size of
the Earth, and the regions stretch across a part of the sun equal to the
diameter of 16 Earths.