Here at Aurorawatch we have been contacted by an amateur radio operator from Washington, USA, who is interested in contacting any of our members who also operate ham radio.
If you do, then please contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it - unless of course conditions permit to meet up over the air waves... ;-) Email follows...
Please let us know if you have success at making this work!
Greetings,
I am an American radio amateur, callsign K7EK. I am involved with all facets of radio communications. I am especially fond of the radio propagation mode whereas we bounce our signals off of the auroral curtain to make contact with other people hundreds or maybe even thousands of miles away. Under normal circumstances, VHF communications is limited to line of sight. Using the auroral curtain as a reflector, we can make contact with many people that we normally cannot reach.
I am interested in contacting any radio amateurs that might be members of your organization. I currently run propagation beacon transmitters on the 28 and 50 Mhz bands under the callsign K7EK/B. On 50.062, I am running 80 watts of transmitter power into a two element HB9CV horizontally polarized antenna, pointed approximately 30 degrees, hopefully toward the auroral curtain. It is hoped that my beacon transmitters will be useful to those studying auroral phenomena. At one time there was a network of similar beacon transmitters that stretched from Western North America to Eastern North America.
Best regards,
Gary E. Kohtala - K7EK
Spanaway, WA