The
Birmingham Alabama, National Weather Service Forecast Office will be
participating in the 2007 SKYWARN Recognition Day. This event started
by the National Weather Service and the American Radio Relay League,
celebrates contributions to public safety made by volunteer SKYWARN
participants. NWS offices frequently acquire real time information from
radio equipped weather spotters – especially during periods of severe
or adverse weather. These spotters provide valuable ground truth
reports for phenomena such as hail, high winds, tornadoes, flash
flooding, and snow fall reports. Those reports are used by our staff to
prepare and verify statements and warnings
During this event, SKYWARN operators at NWS offices around the
nation make contact with amateur radio operators nationally and around
the world. Contact will be attempted with as many participating NWS
offices as possible via amateur radio. We will operate under our call
sign - K4NWS.
This event takes place the first Saturday of December for 24 hours
from 0000-2400Z (Universal Coordinated Time). Locally, this will be
from 6 PM CST Friday evening through 6 PM CST Saturday evening December
1st. A majority of the contacts are made via the High
Frequency (aka. Short Wave) bands 80-10 meters (~3.500-29.7 MHz).
Contacts will also be made via the VHF amateur frequencies on the 6
meter band (~50 MHz) and 2 meter band (~144-148 MHz). Most contacts in
this event are made by phone mode (voice).
Other modes such as Continuous Wave (Morse Code) and digital
modes such as RTTY and PSK31, along with the VoIP (Voice over Internet
Protocol) like IRLP, EchoLink and “D-STAR, KI4PPF C” may be used too.
The North Alabama SKYWARN repeater system will be activated during this event.
For more information, please visit: http://www.hamradio.noaa.gov