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How Ottawa's Project ULTRA Helped Alan Turing Crack Nazi Code:

The story of Alan Turing’s efforts to crack the Nazis’ Enigma code -- made famous yet again by the Oscar-nominated film The Imitation Game -- has a seldom-told Ottawa connection. Just ask Ernie Brown. Brown is one of the last surviving members of a crack team of radio interceptors who were stationed in a secret building in the nation’s capital during the Second World War under a classified program codenamed ULTRA. There, they intercepted coded enemy messages, and relayed them back to Britain. Brown began his involvement as an Ottawa radio operator in 1942. “I listened in on coded signals from any German vessels. Anything over 100 watts was heard across North America,” recalls Brown, who is now 95 and lives in Stouffville, Ont. Copying down the Morse code signal intercepted on Hallicrafter receivers, Brown would listen for a different tone to the signals, which indicated it was hand-keyed rather than a machine-generated signal. Read the story here.

-eham/Ottawa Citizen

21st Century Sunspots A Lot Like The 18th Century:

Some people believe we are in a new Enlightenment, with science making food plentiful and likely to make energy cheap enough to be unnoticeable in the next few decades as well. We share one other thing in common with the 18th century - solar activity. Scientists have been counting sunspots with small telescopes since 1610 so it was quickly learned that the Sun’s activity increases every eleven years, according to the interval in the growth of the number of darker and colder spots in comparison with the rest of its surface. The more spots that appear, the more luminous the surrounding areas are, and our star shines brighter. Even with telescope data, the indices used by scientists disagreed on solar activity of dates prior to 1885 but a new effort to standardize the historical results finds that the solar activity of our times is very similar to the Enlightenment. And it confirms that the eleven-year cycles don't always have the same intensity and probably never did. The more intense peaks of the Sun’s luminosity were produced in the 20th century, which experts have called the ‘modern maximum’ but there were also elevated values in other periods. “It has been a huge surprise to observe that in the 18th century the levels of the Sun’s activity were practically the same as they are now,” says José M. Vaquero, researcher at the University of Extremadura (Spain) and co-author of the research, which is a review of the number of sunspots recorded in the last 400 years. All this after coming off the Quietest Solar Minimum Since 1913.

-eham/Science2.0

Farewell RadioShack: How Technology Made and Unmade an American Icon:

Bankrupt at the age of 93, the store that once proclaimed itself “America’s #1 Electronics Store – Nobody Compares!” will shutter its shops and declare its chapter over in the saga of technology of the past century. RadioShack, maybe more than any other American company, has charted the history of modern technology even through the store’s messy, prolonged demise. More than a decade after its first shop opened in Boston in 1921 to sell radios to ship captains who had small radio houses on board their vessels, RadioShack’s first catalogue advertised radios alongside the latest microphones, record players and and “custom built Taylor Tubes”. RadioShack’s long story ended in a new century as messy and marked by technology as the retailer had been at its highest success: a bizarre collection of America’s most advanced contraptions and its most trivial and weird diversions, and all of it for sale. Unfortunately for the retailer, Americans outpaced it in both ingenuity and consumption, with no heed for the fact that RadioShack had helped wire their world together. Read more here.

-eham/the Guardian

Georgia QSO Party

2015 marks the 54th consecutive (nearly) year that the Georgia QSO Party (GQP) has been challenging amateurs all over the world with the best award/plaque program in the US. IN 2014, 272 amateurs submitted logs vying for the thirty-nine award plaques that were earned.
The GQP is held in a pair of ten-hour sessions on the second full weekend in April; this year that will be April 11-12, 2015. Hopefully all 159 Georgia counties will be on the air.

The Buzzard Roost Certificate

The "Buzzard Roost", an "educational" gathering....not a net!.... convenes on 3975 kHz at 2400 UTC on Monday nights. They issue a certificate to folks brave enough to check in!

Radio History: A Century of Amateur Radio and the ARRL

Look at this "history" of ham radio through the eyes of the ARRL, an interesting read!

German Enigma machine in recessed bay in the table in lower left of picture, taken aboard a German sub, 1941:

ARRL Southeast Division Georgia State Net (GSN) Georgia CW Training Net (GTN) Georgia Skywarn/ WX4PTC Officers_Net Info_LocalClubs Membership Roster Membership Application Constitution & By Laws ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *Upcoming Hamfests* Dalton Hamfest February 28 Dalton, GA MORE BirmingHamfest March 7 Irondale, AL MORE Ellijay Hamfest March 21 Ellijay, GA MORE Wiregrass ARC Tailgate April 25 Headland, AL MORE Atlanta Hamfestival June 6 Marietta, GA MORE Huntsville Hamfest August 15-16 Huntsville, AL MORE Stone Mountain Hamfest November 7 Lawrenceville, GA MORE		How Ottawa's Project ULTRA Helped Alan Turing Crack Nazi Code: The story of Alan Turing’s efforts to crack the Nazis’ Enigma code -- made famous yet again by the Oscar-nominated film The Imitation Game -- has a seldom-told Ottawa connection. Just ask Ernie Brown. Brown is one of the last surviving members of a crack team of radio interceptors who were stationed in a secret building in the nation’s capital during the Second World War under a classified program codenamed ULTRA. There, they intercepted coded enemy messages, and relayed them back to Britain. Brown began his involvement as an Ottawa radio operator in 1942. “I listened in on coded signals from any German vessels. Anything over 100 watts was heard across North America,” recalls Brown, who is now 95 and lives in Stouffville, Ont. Copying down the Morse code signal intercepted on Hallicrafter receivers, Brown would listen for a different tone to the signals, which indicated it was hand-keyed rather than a machine-generated signal. Read the story here. -eham/Ottawa Citizen 21st Century Sunspots A Lot Like The 18th Century: Some people believe we are in a new Enlightenment, with science making food plentiful and likely to make energy cheap enough to be unnoticeable in the next few decades as well. We share one other thing in common with the 18th century - solar activity. Scientists have been counting sunspots with small telescopes since 1610 so it was quickly learned that the Sun’s activity increases every eleven years, according to the interval in the growth of the number of darker and colder spots in comparison with the rest of its surface. The more spots that appear, the more luminous the surrounding areas are, and our star shines brighter. Even with telescope data, the indices used by scientists disagreed on solar activity of dates prior to 1885 but a new effort to standardize the historical results finds that the solar activity of our times is very similar to the Enlightenment. And it confirms that the eleven-year cycles don't always have the same intensity and probably never did. The more intense peaks of the Sun’s luminosity were produced in the 20th century, which experts have called the ‘modern maximum’ but there were also elevated values in other periods. “It has been a huge surprise to observe that in the 18th century the levels of the Sun’s activity were practically the same as they are now,” says José M. Vaquero, researcher at the University of Extremadura (Spain) and co-author of the research, which is a review of the number of sunspots recorded in the last 400 years. All this after coming off the Quietest Solar Minimum Since 1913. -eham/Science2.0 Farewell RadioShack: How Technology Made and Unmade an American Icon: Bankrupt at the age of 93, the store that once proclaimed itself “America’s #1 Electronics Store – Nobody Compares!” will shutter its shops and declare its chapter over in the saga of technology of the past century. RadioShack, maybe more than any other American company, has charted the history of modern technology even through the store’s messy, prolonged demise. More than a decade after its first shop opened in Boston in 1921 to sell radios to ship captains who had small radio houses on board their vessels, RadioShack’s first catalogue advertised radios alongside the latest microphones, record players and and “custom built Taylor Tubes”. RadioShack’s long story ended in a new century as messy and marked by technology as the retailer had been at its highest success: a bizarre collection of America’s most advanced contraptions and its most trivial and weird diversions, and all of it for sale. Unfortunately for the retailer, Americans outpaced it in both ingenuity and consumption, with no heed for the fact that RadioShack had helped wire their world together. Read more here. -eham/the Guardian Georgia QSO Party 2015 marks the 54th consecutive (nearly) year that the Georgia QSO Party (GQP) has been challenging amateurs all over the world with the best award/plaque program in the US. IN 2014, 272 amateurs submitted logs vying for the thirty-nine award plaques that were earned. The GQP is held in a pair of ten-hour sessions on the second full weekend in April; this year that will be April 11-12, 2015. Hopefully all 159 Georgia counties will be on the air. The Buzzard Roost Certificate The "Buzzard Roost", an "educational" gathering....not a net!.... convenes on 3975 kHz at 2400 UTC on Monday nights. They issue a certificate to folks brave enough to check in! Radio History: A Century of Amateur Radio and the ARRL Look at this "history" of ham radio through the eyes of the ARRL, an interesting read! German Enigma machine in recessed bay in the table in lower left of picture, taken aboard a German sub, 1941:
Check into our sister net, the Georgia Traffic and Emergency Net nightly at 7:15 PM Eastern on 3982.5 mHz ***************
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