My porch thermometer, reading 22F, and -6C the night of March 16th. In other words, COLD FOR MARCH.
I know that the climate prognosticators all say we're headed for a world where places like Seattle will be sunny and warm like Southern California, and the rest of the Earth is either going to be covered in seawater or burned to a crisp, but the Winter and Spring weather we've had over the past several years just doesn't seem to be headed in that direction.
I've mentioned before on this blog over the past few years that here where I live, we've had a lot of cold Springs, and the trees have greened later than normal since 2017 or so -- ironically, when the Solar Cycle bottomed out.
This Winter and Spring seem to be no different. Three or four nights ago -- as I write this -- it was 12 degrees F outside during the evening. That's minus 8 for you Centigrade and Celsius people. That's cold for Seattle. Usually we only get cold nights like that in December and January -- not near the end of February. Right now as I write and edit this post it's near freezing outside.
Last week I got off work during the early evening and went out to my car. When I put the key in the door lock it wouldn't move. It was frozen. Luckily the right side door lock still worked.
When I got home I looked at the thermometer on my porch. The temperature was 21 or 22F out -- minus 6 for those of you whose thermometers only have a "C" on the indicator (see above photo).
Even half way into March, it's been below freezing. Several mornings ago when I went out for a bike ride, all the neighbors' cars had frosty windows and roofs, and when I looked at my porch thermometer, the temperature was 23F, -5C.
The last two nights it's been 23F, -5C. When I was a kid March was not this cold a month. It would be 40-50 degrees F and rain (4-5C).
But as you can tell, especially at night, it has been quite cold out. Frigid.
This follows two or three previous Springs which were cold. The local rhododendrons (which I used to photograph on morning bike rides -- my blog posts from 2015 and 2016 have plenty of those pictures -- don't bloom as soon as they used to. Last April (2022) we had freezes as late as halfway through the month. There is nothing like riding your bike on a late April, Spring morning and seeing icy frost on every car and looking at your thermometer and seeing the Centigrade portion in the minus numbers.
This US EPA chart, which states that there have been more days above freezing recently than in the past, only gives data going back to 1979, a span of just 40 years. If the EPA's figures are any indication, however, the cold Springs I've noticed over the past several years are local only.
The EPA chart site can be found here.:
YET ANOTHER COLD SPRING?
Global Warming may be happening somewhere, but not in my area. :-)
I am presently of the opinion that climate is at least partially dependent on the Sunspot Cycle. I don't really have any scientific evidence to back that up, aside from one study done in the US in the 1970s that showed that crop yields are historically lower during Solar Minimums -- here is a link to that article.:
But the cold Springs we've had here in my region of the US have been a fairly recent phenomenon, and we've been in a Solar Minimum since 2017. In fact, we're just coming out of one, but the solar activity hasn't increased all that much, considering how quickly it increased in 2011-2012, when the last Solar Cycle picked up.
According to this NASA Solar Output chart, the Sun's activity has lessened since the 1990's. In fact, according to its chart here, the Solar Cycle 'peak' we had in 2012 matched Solar Minimums in the 1970s!
A NASA chart comparing global average temperatures to the Sun's actual energy output. The interesting part is that the Solar Output is decreasing gradually. If you look closely, you can see the thinner yellow line that denotes the individual Solar Cycles.
The Solar minimums between 1970 and 2000 had equal or higher solar output than the last Maximum we had, in 2012. That might explain why some ham radio guys and SW and MW DXers remember that the long distance radio conditions seemed better 30+ years ago. It is because the ionosphere was working better. :-)
Then again, the cold Springs we've been seeing here could be due to other factors.
At least some scientists believe that Solar output is decreasing, and will continue to decrease during the next 90 years, until around the year 2100.:
Their main concern seems to be its effect, if any, on Global Warming and global climate change. They don't cover the aspect of the sun's effect on crops, local weather, etc. The idea that the reduction in solar output might affect crops worldwide seems to be a non-issue to these scientists.
My cat when I first got her... just a kitten.
MY CAT IS AN 'AFFECTION EATER'
I have a cat, Squeakers, who wasn't eating enough. It took me a couple weeks to realise she just wasn't eating. I'd put food out for her and she'd eat some, and if I went to another room, went to work, or went to bed -- she'd stop eating. It was like she wanted me to watch her eat. She always had this tendency, but she used to always keep eating if I went off to another part of the house. But somehow this changed a couple months ago, and she started losing weight because of it.
I took her to the local veterinarian, and he said her bloodwork was normal, and aside from the lost weight she was in good health. He told me to monitor her meals and bring her back for re-weighing in a month or two. So far, so good. But I still have my fingers crossed.
After doing some research online I have found that some cats, like mine, are picky eaters, and some cats only will eat when you're nearby watching them, and Squeakers is that way. She also doesn't seem to want to eat when my other cats are around.
So, now I watch her eat. With no other cats around. Several times a day. I'm fine with that. And it seems to be working -- she seems to be gaining some weight.
Lesson learned: if you have a cat who wants you to watch her eat, or doesn't eat well when other cats are around, pay attention!
MY CAT DOES NOT LIKE THE GUITAR
I have learned another thing new about my cat. I already knew she didn't like the bagpipes. But when I took in a small, nylon string acoustic guitar (a Decca I've had for years) into the bathroom where I've been feeding her, she doesn't like that either. As soon as I started playing it she looked at me and meowed, like she was saying "knock that off, Dad!"
In other day-to-day things, work has been slamming me from time to time. I work for an attorney in Seattle and we are engaged in some intense litigation against a fairly large company. It's been a challenge. I appreciate the work, of course, but there have been some weekends I've slept up to 10-11 hours a night because I'm so tired.
RADIO RECEPTION = FAIR TO MEDIOCRE OVERALL
On the radio front I've usually DXed the MW band and SW bands every night and morning, and the results have been up and down -- mostly fair to mediocre. On a good SW listening session the 31 Meter SW Band, which used to be wall to wall signals during the waning years of the Cold War, might have 6-7 stations on it, and not all of them clearly readable.
I have mentioned this before on my blog, but it's sad how far the medium of SW Radio has fallen. Some radio people online just fob it off to the advancement of new technology -- something I understand, but new tech shouldn't completely eliminate the old. We went from horse and buggy to gas powered automobiles, yet we didn't kill off all the horses, and ban the use horseback as a recreational means of short travel. I think there is room for new tech and old tech, but the rest of the world doesn't agree. So you live with it.
CHINA, SHORT-WAVE, AND 'SOFT POWER'
A lot of times when the ionosphere is cooperating I hear China Radio International broadcasting, in various languages. I've heard them broadcasting to the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and parts of Europe. They play a lot of pleasant, easy-going pop music, usually well made and well produced. The Chinese recognise that SW radio is a form of projecting "soft power" -- and the results of projecting "soft power" are not something that a country can obviously or immediately measure, but in the past many countries have used radio to project their opinions and policies.
During the Cold War, the competing SW broadcasts from either side of the Iron Curtain were attempting to use "soft power" to influence people on the other side of the geopolitical divide. Radio Moscow, for example, was audible 24 hours a day on the different SW bands. It was the Soviet Union's most obvious attempt at using "soft power" to influence people in other parts of the world.
It may or may not have changed listeners' minds, but Radio Moscow was interesting to hear. I listened to Radio Moscow's World Service almost every night, and it didn't change my view of the Soviet Union's policies -- however, it helped me understand the Soviet peoples a bit more.
Nearly every other morning or evening I can hear the US's Radio Marti broadcasting to Cuba in Spanish. The programs are well produced, and their announcers sound professional and they have great radio voices. Sometimes you can hear the noise jamming that Cuba throws up on the frequency to keep Cuban people from listening. Listening to Marti -- and I can understand maybe a third of what they're saying in Spanish -- I wonder if anyone in Cuba is actually listening to the Marti broadcasts.
There don't seem to be many, if any, surveys of Marti's actual audience. However, a quick search shows that Radio Marti representatives believe that at least 20 percent of Cubans listen to Marti at least once a week. If true, it obviously justifies the expense put into the Marti programs, which are very well produced.
Another very well produced broadcast on the Shortwaves that I've heard lately is KBS World Radio from South Korea, broadcasting to the Indian Subcontinent, in English, during the mid to late morning, Pacific Time. As their transmission is beamed SW from their antennas in South Korea, I'm probably hearing them off the back of their beam. The quality of their English language broadcast is quite good, with good announcers and a lot of information on Korea and Korea's place in geopolitics. Once again, I hope for their sake that there are a lot of KBS listeners in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Being that the Indian Subcontinent has more than a billion people, chances are high that at least a few thousand are listening on their SW radios. Who knows?
One benefit that SW broadcasting has in Third and Fourth World countries is that to hear information from across the world, you don't need to use your cell phone or internet connection -- and cell service and internet service can be expensive for people in less developed regions of the world. But modern day SW radios are reasonably priced, and with today's DSP chip technology a radio can hear a lot just off the whip. Once you've got the radio, the only cost is the batteries or battery charging costs -- something you still deal with when you have a cell phone -- charging the battery.
My Radio Shack 200629, a.k.a. late-run, Radio Shack badged Sangean ATS-505. I recently learned that even a tiny bit of corrosion on a battery's tip will make a radio intermittent. Here is a pic of the radio working again, tuned to 1440 khz, KMED, Medford, Oregon -- a news-talk station that was set to go off the airwaves the first week of January, but is still on the air.
GOT RADIOS? CHECK YOUR BATTERIES!
Last, but not least, I discovered two simple fixes to problems I've had with two of my Sangean-made, Radio Shack radios. Both my Radio Shack 200629 (a Radio Shack badged, late-run Sangean ATS505) and my Realistic DX-398 (a Radio Shack badged ATS-909) developed intermittent problems: after being turned on, the radios would turn themselves off within a few seconds.
I first noticed it on my DX-398 about four or five ago. I'd put in fresh batteries, and the radio would turn on, and then turn itself off after about 15 seconds, with a Low Battery ('Low Batt') warning. But the batteries were new.
It was as if the radio's circuitry was not recognising that the batteries had enough charge.
When I'd hook up the AC adapter, the DX-398 would work perfectly, for hours. So the radio itself wasn't the problem.
I took the back off of the radio and re-soldered the negative battery terminal, as I had done in the early 2010's to fix this same problem -- the negative terminal bears a lot of stress from the spring being compressed. But that did not help.
My Realistic DX-398, which is working again. This pic was from earlier in the evening, when I was tuning the SW and MW bands for about an hour without any problems after experiencing intermittent power from corrosion in the battery compartment. When I took this pic, I was listening to a couple hams talking, in SSB, on the 20 Meter Amateur Radio band. Battery corrosion -- it can stop your radio from working. Check those batteries periodically, and check and clean your battery compartments!
Finally, I discovered the issue after hitting the bottom of the radio in frustration. Suddenly, it was working normally with the battery! I took a second look at the battery compartment, and I found some corrosion that was hard to see, but it was quite visible when I used a flashlight. It looked like a small patch of white powder. The corrosion was on the positive battery terminal inside the battery compartment, and it looked like it had been there a while. It was a small amount of corrosion, but it looked like it might interfere with the delivery of juice to the radio.
I cleaned the terminal, scraping away the corrosion by using a small screwdriver tip; and then I cleaned the terminal with some tuner cleaner on a Q-tip cotton swab. I then loaded the batteries back in, and my DX-398 started working normally.
The problem I had with my Radio Shack 200629 was similar. A month or more ago, I noticed it was doing the same exact thing: it had fairly new batteries, and it would turn itself off about 5-10 seconds after being switched on.
After wondering what was going on with it, two nights ago I took out the batteries and looked them over. One of the AA's had a small bit of corrosion on the positive side, on the tip. I cleaned it off. The radio now works normally. In fact, I DXed the MW band the past two nights for over an hour with it powered by the batteries, and it works fine.
LESSON LEARNED: Check your batteries, and check your battery compartments!!!
If you're like me, you probably keep batteries in your DX portable radios all the time. Sometimes there might be just a tiny bit of corrosion, and it will eventually mess with your radio.
It's probably a good idea to clean the terminals periodically with a shot of tuner cleaner or WD40 on a Q-tip, or even a bit of alcohol on a Q-Tip (cotton swab) if you don't have tuner cleaner handy.
Well, that's it for now.
I still have an article on the Tecsun PL-398MP in the works, and a Shortwave Logging post I want to put up soon. It's just a matter of editing it down and then posting it.
DON'T FORGET TO PET YOUR CAT
Here's hoping all you cat owners are doing OK. Make sure you pet your cat every day. Taking my cat to the vet reminded me I need to appreciate every day my cat is meowing, eating, and wanting to be petted.
Until next time, my friends, PEACE.
C.C. March 19th and 21st, 2023.
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