Saturday, December 6, 2008

2008 Skywarn Recognition Day

Last night marked the start of the 2008 National Skywarn Recognition Day. We (Robin - AJ4IJ, Ashby - KJ4EGJ and I - AJ4JD) were at home when we heard one of our local HAMs give a call with a different callsign WX4MRX on the 145.470 WB4GBI repeater for the Skywarn Recognition Day special event. We quickly made contact with John and exchanged current weather conditions marking our first contact for the event.
Later on in the evening I ventured over to dad's (KU4ME) to play radio with him and to try and catch up on the event. Dad had already worked 8 or 9 weather stations across the country. After firing up the laptop and starting the logging software, I sat down and began hunting down weather stations participating in the event on 80 meters. After a couple of hours of work I had tallied a total of 8 contacts with various weather stations from Illinois, Kentucky, South Carolina, and South Dakota just to name a few. Dad also added to his tally.
I believe we are planning to head over there later today to work some more weather stations on some of the other bands provided conditions are good. So if you have the chance, get on the radio and make some contacts to show your appreciation for Skywarn. Without Skywarn and our community of weather spotters, we might not have good up-to-date severe weather information. If you want to learn more about Skywarn and how to become a certified weather spotter check you local weather service website or you can go to the National Weather Service's Skywarn info page.

Until next time, 73 and God Bless,
Tim
AJ4JD

Happy DX.

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