Topics and links of the broadcast 27-11-2022 11:00 am (CEST)

Artemis I – Flight Day 11: Orion Surpasses Apollo 13 Record Distance from Earth

On day 11 of the Artemis I mission, Orion continues its journey beyond the Moon after entering a distant retrograde orbit Friday, Nov. 25, at 3:52 p.m. CST. Orion will remain in this orbit for six days before exiting lunar orbit to put the spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth and f a Sunday, Dec. 11, splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Orion surpassed the distance record for a mission with a spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and back to Earth, at 7:42 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 26. The record was set during the Apollo 13 mission at 248,655 miles from our home planet. At its maximum distance from the Moon, Orion will be more than 270,000 miles from Earth Monday, Nov. 28.

Engineers also completed the first orbital maintenance burn by firing auxiliary thrusters on Orion’s service module at 3:52 p.m. for less than a second to propel the spacecraft at .47 feet per second. The planned orbital maintenance burns will fine-tune Orion’s trajectory as it continues its orbit around the Moon.

source: Nasa

Ready for the 36 EUDXF activities month? 11/11/2022 (in Dutch by Fred Verburgh PA0FVH)

Over the past decade, EUDXF has sponsored many well-known DXers and numerous DXpeditions. The EUDXF logo appears on the QSL cards of the main activities sponsored by the European DX Foundation (EUDXF).

In November, a number of special event stations celebrating 36 years of EUDXF will be active. Read more.

Clear explanation of radio operating practices (in Dutch by ON4WW)

By chance I found the following which I do not want to keep from you. Because I sometimes get annoyed with the way some radio amateurs apparently don't quite follow the usual etiquettes, here's an obvious repeat exercise. It is written in Dutch.

Who among us (not counting the old guard who didn't have to take an exam) got his driver's license by just passing a theoretical exam? No one. Until the basic license course, there was never any form of training in Belgium on how to make a QSO. A theoretical exam and hopla, the brand new radio amateur is released on the band. With a not always nice result. By analogy with the driving test: imagine that you only take a theoretical test, get your driver's license, and then go on the road in a vehicle that you have never driven. Well, this is exactly what happens to radio amateurs.

In his first years as a radio amateur, the author made mistakes just like everyone else (still, by the way, but a lot less) and with this writing he wants to encourage newcomers to quickly sound like a 'pro' on the tapes. The mistakes he made in the past were mostly copied by listening to the old-timers. They are not to blame. There has never been a clear manual on how to communicate on the amateur bands. Be polite ...... read more.

Radio propagation and news (by PC5D)

Propagation news is curated by Tom PC5D. In the composition he makes other use of the information relevant to the Netherlands from the weekly Propagation News of the British radio amateur association RSGB, dxinfocentre , darc.de/der-club/referate/hf/ , Make More Miles on VHF and poollicht.be. Propagation news is also part of the radio news of the South Limburg Sunday morning round. The audio recording of this round is back listened on a22.veron.nl

HF

Total solar activity has decreased over the past week and is not expected to increase much in the near term. In the last 48 hours, the X-ray background flux was mostly in the highest B class. Only one C1.1 flare was seen early Friday morning, originating from active area 3149.

The solar flux has dropped below 110 units. The reason for this was a lack of active regions on the side of the sun facing us. On the visible solar disk, there are currently only four sunspot regions with simple magnetic configurations.

The speed of the solar wind is currently high, the geomagnetics are restless (Kp 3-4). For the coming days, NOAA expects increased solar wind speeds and turbulent geomagnetics with Kp 3 to 4., and a solar flux index of approximately 110. During the day, the MUF can briefly rise above 30 MHz. Then it pays to listen on 10m to the CW contest stations from Southeast Asia and Australia. DX activity will be mainly in the 7 to 21 MHz range for the next few days. At night, the MUF occasionally drops below 10 MHz over a distance of 3000 km. In general, the breeding conditions are similar to the previous days.

VHF, EME

Due to a receding high-pressure area, the wind is currently coming from a southerly direction, and therefore over land. Tropo conditions are therefore at most reasonable, but the better equipped stations in the south may still benefit from an area with reasonable conditions towards France and Switzerland.

The expected precipitation in the coming days is probably not intense enough for rain scatter on the GHz Bands. Last week's Alpha Monocerotids meteor shower is over, but November's minor Orionids, active until Dec. 6, will peak on Monday, Dec. 28. More important, however, are the Geminids meteor shower in December. It starts on the 4th and reaches a ZHR of over 100 between the 14th and 15th.

The moon's declination increases again and turns positive on Friday. So lunar windows will get longer and zenith angles will increase. Path losses, on the other hand, are starting to pick up again this week after last Friday's perigee. We'll have to wait until mid-2026 for the maximum declination to coincide with the lowest path loss, but we're headed that way again. 144MHz sky clutter is low all week, not rising above 300 Kelvin until next Sunday.