§ || ¶Where Did All The Sunspots Go?
This proves we're at the bottom of the 11-year sunspot cycle. Another day with NO sunspots. This is a real problem for low-power ham radio communication. Radio wave propagation depends on the solar wind generated by sunspots on the sun's surface to create an ionized layer in the atmosphere to bounce signals off of. As a result, high-frequency communication (3-30MHz) has been quite difficult over the past couple of days. All I can hear from my modest radio shack in Oakland is noise. It may take another year before I can hope to make regular contacts in Europe and South America. Read today's report from K7RA.
§ || ¶150 Images
There are now 150 images on my photo blog. I've been adding images almost daily since September. These pictures come from under my desk, where I've stashed some of the 8000+ slides I've taken since somewhere around 1964. Uploading these pictures has been my nightly practice. A ritual. Very strange to be looking back some 30-40 years. Each picture does have a story, sort of. Maybe I'll start adding those stories. Right now it's just the images. Still more to do. I figure 5% is about right. I start worrying I'm going to run out of images, so I should take some more. So far I've always been able to find something worth showing.
It's always a surprise, even to me.