(Courtesy of US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
at http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/rt_plots/xray_5m.html )
| WA8LMF Home Page | Main Ham Radio Page | Updated 22 May 2013 |
NOTE 1: This page links to a server hosted on a PC connected to a consumer cable modem account with a 1.5MB/sec upload speed. Due to limited bandwidth of this connection, images may occasionally fail to load if I have other large bandwidth-sucking uploads in progress. If one or more of the maps fail to appear, hit "Refresh" or "Reload" on your browser toolbar.
NOTE 2: Disable automatic image resizing in your browser. The maps sent by this server are likely to be much larger than your browser window. The automatic downsizing for large images provided in some browsers will make the thin lines and small details on the maps an illegible blur if not turned off. With resizing turned off, you will have to scroll down and/or to the right to see all of the maps.
NOTE 3: This webserver is on TCP/IP port 14439 rather than the customary port 80 for http . As a result, you may not be able to access it from some corporate or government Internet connections that severely firewall or otherwise restrict access to uncommon port numbers.
NOTE 4: Propagation on 30 meters HF is highly sensitive to the level of solar activity. When the solar X-ray flux plotted on the graph below has a baseline above the first major division, or spikes upward (i.e. a solar flare), 30 meters will have very poor conditions, or black out completely, causing very few (or no stations at all) to show on the HF map.
Ultraviolet radiation from the sun travels at the speed of light, reaching the earth in about 8 minutes. The flare may also be accompanied by a blast of charged particles traveling far more slowly that reaches the earth in one or two days. The result is that there can be two fadeouts associated with one event, one within minutes and then a second one a day or two later. The only positive associated with these events is that people outside the Arctic or Antarctic regions of the world have a much better chance of seeing an aurora that night.
(Courtesy of US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
at
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/rt_plots/xray_5m.html )
The webserver produces a multiple map display.
This display, served by the UI-Webserver component of UI-View, is created by two copies of UI-View32 running simultaneously on the same computer. Both instances are connected to APRS Internet servers using filter ports set to receive JUST my own callsign and nearby stations.
HF is being received with the UZ7HO "Soundmodem"
software packet TNC, the CrossCountry Wireless "APRS Messenger" APRS-over-PSK63
program running on the same soundcard, and a Kenwood TS-440 connected to a homebrew magnetic loop antenna.
VHF is being monitored with an AEA PK-12 TNC and a Kenwood TM-211 connected to a
Comet 2M/UHF 19' "SuperGainer" collinear.
Both instances of UIview are set to
capture and date-time-stamp an image of their map automatically every 2 minutes. Only the first instance
of UIview is running the
UI-View webserver. I have extensively modified the
original UI-View "special pages/index.html" code to provide the links to the
other maps.
All of this is running under Windows XP SP3 on a Via 1GMHz micro-ITX motherboard with 1 GB of RAM connected to a D-Link DIR-655 router/4-port switch.
Details on the "Ham Super Server" setup that runs this site are
here.
