Views of the Solar Enhanced Northern Lights

Two hams sent me pictures of the auroras from the solar storm. Both photos were taken Sunday evening May 12th (2024) during the period where several successive CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) were enhancing the opportunity for a big light show of Northern Lights.

First picture was taken between 30,000 and 40,000 feet from a East Coast to West Coast flight over Wisconsin:

Airborne Aurora

The next picture was taken a couple miles from my Island QTH at the Washington Island airport (identifier P2P):

Hijacked Accounts

Like many hams I keep semi-dormant accounts using my callsign at various social media.

I seldom actually use these auxiliary accounts, mostly holding them to minimize traffic that by use of my callsign looks like I was the source.

So interestingly this morning as I did my first clearing of emails, I found a message telling me my @K9ZW Twitter/X account’s password had been changed overnight while I was asleep.

Sure enough I couldn’t log into the account.

Dirty rascals had gotten that far, but seems like they didn’t do anything yet.

Little Projects

Up on Washington Island.  Great super smooth ride across on the newest of the ferries.

Had trouble getting to sleep as the solar storm’s Aurora was quite bright.

Alison’s Citroen 2CV6 ended up with a broken front grill over the winter. Thought something hit it, but investigating glued repairs found the plastic grill had simply become brittle. So I replaced it with a new part from French Parts Service – https://www.2cvsource.com Took longer to find my 8mm socket then to change the grill. Looks good as new.

Before

After

—

Measured up for the underground conduit between my Island Garage and the tower. Hired an islander to dig the trench and sure glad I did.  Lots of rocks and barely 16-18 inches before hitting bedrock.   Need 110 LF of xx diameter conduit plus the two vertical runs, elbow where turning vertical, pull boxes (two), the couplers at the pull boxes, duct sealer, and the use of a conduit heater type bender.

A few views  of the trench.

Along side the garage. Other conduit is to house.

 

And of course it started raining – Manlift arrived

Today the boom manlift was delivered.

And of course it promptly started raining.

In past when rental lifts were delivered my local weather went bad at delivery as well.

Project work will start soon.  But not in the rain!

73

Steve
K9ZW

My Citroen CX Trio

Presently I have three Citroen CX cars.

• 1981 CX Athena 5-speed 2.0L car with the later CX engine design, with about 27,000 miles on the clock
• 1981 CX 2400 Pallas Automatic with A/C and about 47,000 miles on it’s clock
• 1978 CX 2400 Prestige Cmatic with dual-A/C and only about 14,000 miles on it

Most amazingly is all three are here in Northeastern Wisconsin, where seeing any Citroen is a rare occasion.

Athena, Pallas and Prestige

Another view of the trio:

Is University Worth It?

Would say that unless you need:

• Specific Training ONLY available at University (like STEM)
• Access to Networking Opportunities ONLY available at University

That University is wasted time and money.

To be transparent I have at least three University Degrees (an Associates, a Bachelor’s in Business Administration & Computer Science, and an Masters in Business Administration). Technically somehow I got a second Associates and the two-year MBA program said we had our DipBA (Diploma in Business Administration) after the first year in case we needed it for resume purposes. So maybe I have five degrees?  I don’t really care, but I mention this so we’re clear that I have done the path attending University.

Back in the day I wasn’t going to get significant computer, much less mainframe time, without University access, and I was pretty aware that skipping the MBA was going to set my management career back 10-15 years in the end.

That doesn’t seem to be the case on either point in today’s world.