Would your amateur radio equipment survive an Electromagnetic Pulse event, man-made or otherwise?
That's the question Pittsburgh, Kansas-based amateur radio operator Tyler Constantini, KB0PQP, will try to answer on Thursday, September 7 in an unusual Skype/Visual presentation to the Sangamon County Radio Club.
The program, at 7 p.m., will address not only the technical side of an EMP, but also the personal impact it could have on individual ham radio operations.
EMPs--a short burst of electromagnetic energy capable of disrupting or damaging electronic equipment--can be natural or man-made, the latter scenario worrisome because of the development of weapons that could unleash a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) high above the Earth's surface.
Constantini will describe and explain the technical side of how this could happen and what steps need to be taken to prevent your ham radio equipment from damage or destruction.
Constantini, who holds a degree in Computer Network Technology from Vatterott College and studied physics and electronics at Pittsburg State University, is a radio and computer network consultant who runs two on-line retail businesses and writes custom meteorological software, He is also an avid storm chaser often traveling thousands of miles to document severe weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes. He work has been featured on major networks including The Weather Channel, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
A licensed ham at age 13, he holds a general class ticket and is active in local radio clubs including the Southeast Kansas Amateur Radio Club and the Pittsburg Repeater Organization. He operates mostly on HF using digital modes such as FT-8 and JT9 as well as VHF/UHF FM and DMR. He also helps maintain the local VHF / UHF FM repeaters as well as a UHF DMR repeater.
Constantini says he first got interested with the subject of EMPs after reading several inaccurate fictional accounts on the subject. "I started researching and found that very good information on the subject exists in the opensource and could benefit others if compiled into presentation without all of the rigorous mathematics typically found in research papers."
Whether natural or man-made, EMPs can interfere with electrical power and electronic data, control, transmission, and communication systems organic to nearly all critical infrastructures world-wide.
Though rare, natural blackouts caused by solar storms are not unknown. On March 13, 1989 the entire province of Quebec, Canada suffered a 12-hour electrical power blackouts caused by a solar storm. Days earlier, astronomers witnessed a powerful explosion on the sun. Within minutes, a billion-ton cloud of gas rushed out from the sun, straight towards Earth, at a million miles an hour.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the solar flare that accompanied the outburst immediately caused short-wave radio interference, including the jamming of radio signals from Radio Free Europe into Russia, something initially blamed on the Soviet Union. When the cloud finally struck Earth's magnetic field, the violence of the geomagnetic storm' caused spectacular 'northern lights' that could be seen as far south as Florida, Texas, and Cuba.
Just after 2:44 a.m. on March 13, the currents found a weakness in the electrical power grid of Quebec. In less than 2 minutes, the entire Quebec power grid lost power. Across the United States, from coast to coast, over 200 power grid problems erupted within minutes of the start of the March 13 storm. Fortunately none of these caused a blackout but in space, some satellites tumbled out of control for several hours. Yet another solar storm, in August 1989, caused a halt of all trading on the Toronto, Canada, stock market.
The history of these solar flare events dates back even further.
A solar storm of 1859 induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record, September 1 and September 2, 1859. Known as the Carrington Event, in honor of the British astronomer Richard Carrington who observed and recorded it, the solar coronal mass ejection induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record. EMP experts say a solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would likely cause more widespread problems for a modern and technology-dependent society. A solar storm in 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth's orbit without striking the planet.
Each month's SVRC meeting includes a presentation related to ham radio. The general public is welcome to attend as well as area ham operators and SVRC club members.
SVRC Hqs, 1045 Outer Park Drive, Room 330, Springfield, IL 09/07/2017 9:00pm America/Chicago public
Would your amateur radio equipment survive an Electromagnetic Pulse event, man-made or otherwise?
That's the question Pittsburgh, Kansas-based amateur radio operator Tyler Constantini, KB0PQP, will try to answer on Thursday, September 7 in an unusual Skype/Visual presentation to the Sangamon County Radio Club.
The program, at 7 p.m., will address not only the technical side of an EMP, but also the personal impact it could have on individual ham radio operations.
EMPs--a short burst of electromagnetic energy capable of disrupting or damaging electronic equipment--can be natural or man-made, the latter scenario worrisome because of the development of weapons that could unleash a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) high above the Earth's surface.
Constantini will describe and explain the technical side of how this could happen and what steps need to be taken to prevent your ham radio equipment from damage or destruction.
Constantini, who holds a degree in Computer Network Technology from Vatterott College and studied physics and electronics at Pittsburg State University, is a radio and computer network consultant who runs two on-line retail businesses and writes custom meteorological software, He is also an avid storm chaser often traveling thousands of miles to document severe weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes. He work has been featured on major networks including The Weather Channel, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
A licensed ham at age 13, he holds a general class ticket and is active in local radio clubs including the Southeast Kansas Amateur Radio Club and the Pittsburg Repeater Organization. He operates mostly on HF using digital modes such as FT-8 and JT9 as well as VHF/UHF FM and DMR. He also helps maintain the local VHF / UHF FM repeaters as well as a UHF DMR repeater.
Constantini says he first got interested with the subject of EMPs after reading several inaccurate fictional accounts on the subject. "I started researching and found that very good information on the subject exists in the opensource and could benefit others if compiled into presentation without all of the rigorous mathematics typically found in research papers."
Whether natural or man-made, EMPs can interfere with electrical power and electronic data, control, transmission, and communication systems organic to nearly all critical infrastructures world-wide.
Though rare, natural blackouts caused by solar storms are not unknown. On March 13, 1989 the entire province of Quebec, Canada suffered a 12-hour electrical power blackouts caused by a solar storm. Days earlier, astronomers witnessed a powerful explosion on the sun. Within minutes, a billion-ton cloud of gas rushed out from the sun, straight towards Earth, at a million miles an hour.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the solar flare that accompanied the outburst immediately caused short-wave radio interference, including the jamming of radio signals from Radio Free Europe into Russia, something initially blamed on the Soviet Union. When the cloud finally struck Earth's magnetic field, the violence of the geomagnetic storm' caused spectacular 'northern lights' that could be seen as far south as Florida, Texas, and Cuba.
Just after 2:44 a.m. on March 13, the currents found a weakness in the electrical power grid of Quebec. In less than 2 minutes, the entire Quebec power grid lost power. Across the United States, from coast to coast, over 200 power grid problems erupted within minutes of the start of the March 13 storm. Fortunately none of these caused a blackout but in space, some satellites tumbled out of control for several hours. Yet another solar storm, in August 1989, caused a halt of all trading on the Toronto, Canada, stock market.
The history of these solar flare events dates back even further.
A solar storm of 1859 induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record, September 1 and September 2, 1859. Known as the Carrington Event, in honor of the British astronomer Richard Carrington who observed and recorded it, the solar coronal mass ejection induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record. EMP experts say a solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would likely cause more widespread problems for a modern and technology-dependent society. A solar storm in 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth's orbit without striking the planet.
Each month's SVRC meeting includes a presentation related to ham radio. The general public is welcome to attend as well as area ham operators and SVRC club members.