Brent Sylvester, K6IB, has developed a new 3D APRS map website that overlays a car or truck icon on top of a satellite image from Google Maps. You can click and drag, pan and tilt, to look around what’s in the neighborhood.

The website is ready to go if you already have the Google Earth plugin for your browser. If not, you will be prompted to download it when you try to view the map.

VORTEX2 is by far the largest and most ambitious effort ever made to understand tornadoes. We expect over 100 scientists and over 40 science and support vehicles to participate in this unique, fully nomadic, field program during its second and last field season, May/June 2010. The National Science Foundation (NSF) foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are contributing over $10 million towards this effort. Participants will again be drawn from over a dozen universities, and several government and private organizations. International participants will be drawn from Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Australia.

The playground for the VORTEX2 project is a wide swath of the central United States, reaching from northern Texas, to northern South Dakota, and over into central Iowa. For the next month and a half, the armada of VORTEX2 mobile labs, trucks, cars, and Doppler on Wheels (DOW) vehicles will be roaming this area to gain a better understanding of how tornadoes form.

If you enjoy listening to storm reports on DMX MICRN or over Skywarn frequencies, then you’ll enjoy listening in on the VORTEX2 frequencies. The organizers of the project felt comfortable enough to be open with the public to publish the project’s operating manual online, which includes the frequency plan for the project. This doesn’t mean it’s ok to interfere with their project in any way, shape, or form. Period.

Because most of these frequencies are simplex (not using a repeater), you’ll probably need to be within a decent range to hear them. The only channel that will be utilized by a repeater is NSSL 2 (165.4375) and that channel will be used to coordinate vehicles.

National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL)
163.1000 – NSSL 1 (Simplex)
165.4375 – NSSL 2 (Duplex)
161.1000 – NSSL 3 (Simplex)

Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR)/Doppler on Wheels (DOW)
161.5000 – Radar Team Coordination 1
161.4000 – Radar Team Coordination 2
151.9400 – DOW/Telemetry 1
151.8200 – DOW/Telemetry 2
158.4000 – CSWR/DOW

Research teams
161.3000 – Tornado Pod teams 1 – used for DOW to Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV) communications
161.2000 – Tornado Pod teams 2
151.7000 – Mobile Mesonet teams 1
151.7600 – Mobile Mesonet teams 2
161.0000 – StickNet teams 1
160.9000 – StickNet teams 2
160.8500 – Unmanned Aerial Surveillance (UAS) Team
160.8000 – Weather balloon teams

I found this gem on YouTube while searching for other Skywarn videos late one night. While the premise and goals of the Skywarn program have remained unchanged, this video from nearly 40 years ago emphasizes how far the science of weather and personal computing has brought the activity.

Instead of chalkboards, meteorologists now use PowerPoint, videos, pictures, and diagrams on a projection screen to teach the general public (read: not meteorology students). Spotters in the field now have laptops, netbooks, aircards, APRS/GPS, and a whole array of wireless technology to assist them in the field and communicate back to the NWS, EOC, or to other spotters.

Since then, scientists have improved the understanding and reliability of weather forecasting. While weather is a science, humans don’t have it “down to a science” quite yet. But I wonder where we’ll be 40 more years from now?

While I don’t want this to end up in a urinating contest with the RF-purists (although cell phone signals are RF…), it would be cool for those who travel frequently away from their home repeaters. Imagine sitting in a hotel in the evening while on a business trip and being able to check in to your local net or just to ragchew via the iPhone. This especially overcomes the frequent problem with the Echolink PC/Mac client requirement that certain ports need to be opened up on your router — which obviously you don’t have access to on the hotel LAN.

Echolink for iPhone joins iBCNU in the App Store with only a small handful of other ham radio-related apps.

Side note: Occasionally I will log in to Echolink. My user node number is 414323.

Another video was posted on YouTube by Steve, WG0AT, from a QRP contest a few weeks ago. Steve is also called the Goathiker, you may have heard of him. He takes his goats Rooster and Peanut, who faithfully carry Steve’s equipment to mountaintops to operate QRP. This video was shot atop Mount Herman in Colorado, which is 9054 ft above sea level for the Polar Bear Moonlight Madness event.

All of his videos are put together so well, and I encourage you to check out Rooster and Peanut’s YouTube channel and I definitely recommend watching the video of their 2009 Field Day expedition.