PSA: Crystal Controlled Weather Radio

I bought this at a Goodwill for $3.97 plus tax. It takes a 9v battery (or 9V DC adapter) and allows me to tune to one of three frequencies for NOAA weather report: 162.55, 162.475, and 162.40. Of those three only two actually yield a signal out here. The telescoping antenna is about 22 inches tall and looks snazzy with the simulated walnut finish.  It only works near a window but  it works well.You can canvass your local thrift stores or just buy one used on eBay for $7 or so.

(Above image stolen from Etsy.) This is model 12-152A, there was a later revision 12-162 with an identical chassis. The 12-140, and the 12-141 had digital displays, and the 12-1371 was an in-car model. The 12-1818 had a cube chassis and was tunable.  It reeked more of the 1970s than the other models if you're looking for a true classic. These puppies were made by Tandy for Radioshack in the 1970s and 1980s. I think the Timekube was also in this series. More here.

Regardless, comedy aside you should have something like this in your home for emergencies. You should have it and know how to use it. You can look up your local NOAA frequencies here. Knowing where the tornado, hail storm, hurricane, blizzard, tsunami, forest fire or flood crest etc.can be important suddenly. This is a cheap simple way that anyone can be prepared.

NOAA Weather Radio

You know NOAA. Everyone knows NOAA. They know weather, and that makes them your friend. But what you don't know about your friend is that you don't have to go their website to get a weather report.NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards transmitters broadcast in your area on any one of seven VHF frequencies. These range from 162.400 MHz to 162.550 MHz. NWR includes more than 940 transmitters , covering all 50 states, adjacent coastal waters, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Pacific Territories [even guam]. National Weather Service will activate these alert radios not only for tornadoes, and hurricanes, but other severe weather events and even major accidents like a HAZMAT spill, or when someone flips a truckload of garbage on Route 202 North. Check your area here

NOAAA Weather radios have two key features:

Tone alarm: The National Weather Service will send a 1050 Hz tone alarm before warnings. The tone will activate all the receivers which are equipped to receive it, even if the audio is turned off. This is especially useful for warnings which occur during the night when most people are asleep.

SAME technology: SAME, or Specific Alert Message Encoding allows you to specify the particular area for which you wish to receive alerts. Most warnings and watches broadcast over NOAA Weather Radio are county or city based Since most NWR transmitters are broadcasting for a number of counties, SAME receivers will respond only to alerts issued for the area(s) you have selected. This minimizes the number of “false alarms” for events out of your neighborhood.

Unfortunately, the helpful broadcasts cannot be heard on a simple AM/FM radio. They require special receivers. While NOAA's National Weather Service staff prepare and produce Weather Radio broadcasts, NWS does not make or sell the radios. They can also be purchased via the Internet from online retailers or directly from manufacturers. Personally I prefer the classics like the Radio shack "cube" models with the fake veneer finish.

Sunspots and your radio

Seeing as this is a quickly impending reception problem I thought I'd talk about sunspots. It's easy to get lost in the science behind radio wave propagation, (I get lost myself) but there are a few simple rules of thumb you can use to help understand the basics.

...A little history first: Back in 1928 a physicist named Karl Jansky was working on this new fangled technology called radio telephony for Bell labs. At the time, Trans-Atlantic telephone connections (via radio) suffered from interference caused by several things, one of which was a mysterious phenomenon called "magnetic storms." These could disrupt service for days. Nobody knew what caused it, or when or how.

Jansky was not very experienced in radio but took his task seriously. By 1931 Jansky was making regular observations of radio static at a frequency of 20.5 MHz. He identified three basic types of static:
1. Nearby thunderstorms

2. Distant thunderstorms

3. A faint steady hiss of unknown origin.

Jansky spent over a year investigating the third type of static. It rose and fell once a day, leading Jansky to think at first that he was seeing radiation from the Sun. Some of the radio static he observed came from a fixed point in the sky, and it moved! Ultimately he figured out that the source of the cosmic radio noise was our galaxy itself.

So here's where this relates to your radio. You are all aware that AM radio waves (distant ones at least) bounce off the atmosphere as part of their normal propagation. These layers are ionised by radiation from the sun. About every 10 years the sun enters the "solar maximum" a part of its normal cycle when solar activity is high. This increases its output of radiation and a specific layer of our atmosphere, the ionosphere becomes very dense. The good news is that many radio waves from space bounce off and do not cause us interference. The bad news is terrestrial radio stations and other sources of static are trapped inside the ionosphere and cause a great deal of interference. [janskys observations could never have occurred during the maximum]

During a solar maximum the number of sun spots is high, and during a solar minimum the number of sun spots is low. We are entering a solar maximum. This is measured in units of solar flux. Solar Flux is related to the number of sunspots, and affects which frequencies of noise are generally audible. Solar Flux doesn't generally go below about 70; if it's below 100, lower frequencies will work better than higher frequencies. If it's above 150, higher radio frequencies will open.

Then there is the K-index. It's released every three hours by NOAA, and it varies between 0 and 9. If the K-index is 0 or 1 for a few periods in a row, you can expect to hear stations that are normally weak or in someway problematic at somewhat stronger levels. You may hear a few stations that are normally inaudible at weak levels. If the K-index is between 2 and 4, conditions are pretty much normal. If the K-index is 5 or above, there's a geomagnetic storm. The higher the K-index, the more disturbed conditions are. You can check it here. You can also get them on WWV. They broadcast them at 18 minutes past every hour here.