On the Web : October 2005

If you enjoy reading 'On the Web', your ham radio club can publish this column on an exchange basis with SJRA. Contact Ted, , for the exchange details.		Our contributions to the South Jersey Radio Association club bulletin "Harmonics" includes lengthy Web addresses. As the URL's can be difficult or a nuisance to type into your Web browser, the postings here should make it easier to get to the Web sites SJRA members are interested in. Look for the posting at w2xq.com at the time "Harmonics" is scheduled for delivery in the south Jersey area. Questions, suggestions or contributions are always welcome.
		Solar X-rays  Geomagnetic Field  N 3 K L

The 2006 Field Day Rules
The SJRA Field Day Site entrance is on Lower Main Street, Marlton, opposite the Indian Springs Golf Course.
GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates are N 39° 53.162', W 74° 53.486', or use these maps.
Mapquest is almost a 'net standard, but the newer beta Google map looks very good.

Sneak Peak

SJRA members who subscribe to the RSS news feed and pay attention to the hints we drop on the repeater will have a ringside seat to Hurricane Rita's advance on the Texas-Louisiana coast. If you are a member of another club and would like to swap columns, contact W2TAG per the note atop the page.

Hurricane Rita

Rita closely follows on the heals of Katrina that tore up the City of New Orleans, the surrounding parishes, and southern Mississippi. In less than three weeks Katrina victims in Houston are being moved once again. So what's to listen to and watch?

As the time this was written, at 6 pm EDT on the 22nd, the center of the storm was about 405 miles (650 km) SE of Galveston and 390 miles (630 km) SE of Port Arthur and tracking at 9 mph (15 km/h) toward the Texas-Louisiana state line. The National Hurricane Center projects landfall Friday evening or night.

Texas

Several television station in Houston have video on the 'net, but KPRC-2 (NBC) has a continuous live feed blanked only during commercials. It is the best of the bunch to watch, in my opinion. KHOU-11 (CBS) has news video clips at the bottom of the home page. KTRK-13 (ABC)seems to be the weakest in Web coverage, with news blogs from reporters being the one distinglishing feature. Fox and UPN had no news coverage on the Web.

Check out the Texas newspapers on our newspapers' links page; we'll add more Texas papers in the next day or so. Hurricane-specific links are on our weather page.

Louisiana

Many of the links and the discussion of Katrina applies to Rita. Reviewed in the September column, the amateur radio HF net activity continues as does WWL broadcasting on the Web and via LaSea. WWL was quite active in reporting conditions in SW Louisiana where Rita was expected to make a significant impact. The newspapers continues to publish as well.

Satellite

As of the 22nd, Rita was still in the Gulf. However, NOAA's National Geodetic Survey has has already set up a Web address for pictures of Rita once the storm makes landfall. I expect, as before with Katrina, these satellite pictures will be 2-to-3 mb pictures of high resolution. The Web site is ngs.woc.noaa.gov/rita/.

More to come...

Saturday, 24 September 2005

Updating the 23 September changes on the Baudwalking/Rita page (http://monitoringtimes.com/html/baudwalking.html):

Hurricane Rita is now (midday Saturday) near Jasper about 80 miles NE of Houston, slowing down and dumping heaving rain. Forecasts are up to 20 or 25 inches.

KPRC-2 Houston is still playing video, without any problems. The Website is set to time out every 10 minutes or so, but with the Firebox browser in properties one can set the page reload time to 5 minute and thus continue to watch with minimal interruption.

KHOU-11 and KTRK-13 live video is dead on arrival; it hasn't worked all morning. My guess? Houston didn't take a direct hit, so these stations cut the live feeds.

KTRH-740 all news radio works well. KPRC-950 airs KTRH news amongst their own talk radio shows. The direct audio links in Windows Media Player are:

http://ccri.eonstreams.com/ccri_tx_houston_ktrh_am.asf

http://ccri.eonstreams.com/ccri_tx_houston_kprc_am.asf

KFNC-95.7 apparently took a hit; the webserver is among the missing. KTNH-1070 at 1070ktnh.com generates a "file not found" when clicking on the "listen live" button link.

WWL-870 Internet feed is off the air due to a power outage. The AM broadcast continues. The direct audio feed is:

http://ccri.eonstreams.com/ccri_la_batonrouge_wskr_am.asf -- a ESPN Radio sports station on 1210 kHz in Baton Rouge.

On the 22nd, Rita was still in the Gulf. However, NOAA's National Geodetic Survey had already set up a Web address for pictures of Rita once the storm made landfall. I expect, as before with Katrina, these satellite pictures will be 2-to-3 mb pictures of high resolution. The Web site is ngs.woc.noaa.gov/rita/. Despite Rita being 100 miles or so inland midday on the 24th, no pictures are yet posted. Keep watching.

More to come...

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Revised 22 September 2005

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