Visit Auburn, California

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SITE MAP Home Auburn CA Andrea's Pages Fred's Pages Events

"GO THERE NOW" LINKS CURRENT SOLAR STATUS (Click Reload/Refresh) Support Our Troops X-Ray Flux: Be A Blood Donor Kp: N6A - Alpine County Expedition for the Cal QSO Party NOAA issued: 2008 Oct 06 0906 UTC SFI: 67         A-index: 6         K-index: 1 Fisher House - Helping Military Families

Welcome

Welcome! This is basically a personal web site, not unlike the millions of others in cyberspace, however it has served two possibly more important purposes in the past -- coordinating volunteer communications for the Western States 100 mile Endurance Run" and for the Tevis 100 mile Endurance Ride in the Sierra Nevada. I retired from that volunteer job following the 2004 events, and Ralph, W6RWL, stepped up and took over the task. The communications coordination web pages have been moved to the above sites where you'll find links to them.

I am a Vietnam combat veteran. Regardless of how you feel about our current military adventures, I'd really like you to pay a brief visit to the Support Our Troops link. Governments (in our case, elected and appointed civilians) make national policy, and sometimes our military men and women are called on to implement those policies. They didn't make the policies, they're just there trying to make them work. The mail, packages, and support we got from American strangers meant the world to us, and it does to our troops today.

Somewhere around 90% or more of all Americans will require a blood transfusion or blood products at some point in their lives. Many will require multiple units. Of all American adults 16 or older, over half would likely be eligible to donate blood and blood products. Of those, around 10% or a little less actually do donate blood on a regular basis. If asked, "Name people who save other peoples' lives," most folks would say "firefighters," "doctors, nurses, and paramedics," "lifeguards," "sometimes police officers," and maybe even a soldier or two. They're missing the single largest group ... Blood Donors! There's only one source of blood and blood products. If you'd feel good saving someone's live, visit your local blood bank today. If you'd like an overview of the procedures and process, click here for a quick tour.

The Solar Status flags are courtesy of N3KL, and are of interest mainly to amateur radio operators. The Solar X-Ray status is derived from the analysis of the last 24 hours of 5-minute samples from the GOES Satellites in the 1 - 8 angstrom range. The Geomagnetic Activity is represented by the mid-latitude planetary K index (Kp) based on analysis of the last 24 hours of 3 hour mid-latitude samples of Kp. The categories are assigned based on the following limits assigned by NOAA:

X-RAY FLUX		PLANETARY INDEX
NORMAL:	Ix < 1.0E-6 W/m^2	QUIET:	Kp < 4
ACTIVE:	1.0E-6 <= Ix < 1.0E-5 W/m^2	UNSETTLED:	Kp = 4
M-CLASS FLARE:	1.0E-5 <= Ix < 1.0E-4 W/m^2	STORM:	Kp > 4
X-CLASS FLARE	1.0E-4 <= Ix < 1.0E-3 W/m^2
MEGA FLARE	Ix > 1.0E-3 W/m^2

(N3KL notes that the class "MEGA-FLARE" was defined by Kevin Loch when the site went up to describe flares over X-Class (very rare), and is not a NOAA class)

The 10cm Solar Flux Index (SFI), A-Index, and mid-latitude K-Index are provided by NOAA via eHam.net, and are updated on this website four times a day (0030Z, 0630Z, 1430Z, 1830Z).

Parts of this site, including Andrea's Pages (my wife of 38 years) are "Under Construction." God willing, and time available, I'll fill them in. Andrea doesn't "do" computers, although she does a lot of other things.

Navigating the Site

Nearly all of the pages on this site will have a navigation panel like the one on the left. This panel functions similar to Windows Explorer ... you click on a link, you go to that page, and the panel on that page will expand into the sub-pages below it. The page you are currently viewing will probably be highlighted in boldface red (being pretty much totally colorblind, I'm careful when making absolute statements about colors). This navigation panel allows you to move up and down within the site hierarchy. Your browser's "Back" and "Forward" buttons will also work normally.

You will also find links embedded in text and sometimes in photos, such as the picture in the upper left corner. These links are shortcuts and take you directly to the opening page for that subject, saving you having to navigate up and down the hierarchy of all this award-winning drivel. I've tried to standardize the presentation styles so that the visual cues will be more helpful too. Having read a book about "How Not To Design A Web Site," I've changed a few things since 2003, however this site may still be the poster child for that book.

I used Netscape 4.7 for email for many years. It's so old that no one ever seems to write a virus for it or its address book. I also have Internet Explorer 6 and I now use Firefox and Thunderbird. While I'd like to stay compatible with everyone's browser, that appears to be impossible. IE 5 and above will display this site just fine, as will Netscape 6, and all of it's derivitives such as AOL 8 (he says confidently having not tested many of them). Firefox seems to work just fine. Netscape 4.7 will screw up some of the pages. If you have problems, please let me know at "my email address". I make no promises to do anything about it, however.

Thanks for visiting.

Fred
Auburn, CA
09/29/2006

For those interested, the photo at the top of this page is of the crest of the Sierra Nevada at an elevation of about 10,000' (3,000 meters). It was taken from Interstate 80 at Yuba Gap (~5,000'), looking ENE.

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Copyright ©, 2001-2006 All Rights Reserved/Revision 3.40 09/29/2006 1200Z
Page URL: http://www.foothill.net/~andreaj/index.html
Author: k6dgw@arrl.net

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