Montana's Ham Radio Forum

The 2013 Skywarn Recognition Day will take place at the National Weather Service (NWS) office up on Gore Hill near the Great Falls airport. Skywarn Recognition Day is co-sponsored by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and the National Weather Service as a way to recognize the commitment made by Amateur Radio operators to help keep their local communities safe from dangerous weather conditions. The recently upgraded Doppler weather radar at Gore Hill can “see” weather activity from many miles away. Yet, the forecasters always seek confirmation from ground observers to back up the radar return images. They want to be 100% certain that no weather anomaly is being missed by the weather radar. Through the Skywarn program, ham radio operators act as “eyes on scene” to provide “ground truth” feedback to the NWS.

This year will mark the 15th annual Skywarn Recognition Day. Amateur Radio operators can visit their local participating NWS office, working as a team to contact other hams at other NWS offices across the United States during the 24-hour event on 80, 40, 20, 15, 10, 6 and 2 meters, as well as 70 centimeters. The event will start at 5:00 PM Friday, 6 December 2013 and run until 5:00 PM on Saturday, 7 December 2013. The address for our local NWS office is 5324 Tri-Hill Frontage Road. From Great Falls just head out on I-15 and take the airport exit ramp. At the stop sign, turn left and cross over the bridge towards the truck stops. Just before the Pilot Truck Stop, turn right onto the frontage road and head south. The NWS office is about 1.5 miles down on the left, just past the UPS building.

For more information, please contact our local Skywarn coordinators: Ken (W7WOF) and Ray (AE7JN). Stay tuned to the Thursday evening ARES net on the 146.740 MHz repeater at 7:00 PM for further updates. Weather permitting, we will be setting up the GFAARC antenna tower trailer with a tri-band Yagi beam antenna in the field next to the NWS office a few days prior to the event. Everyone is encouraged to stop by and help with the antenna set-up prior to Friday and tear-down on Saturday evening.

We are coordinating with the NWS office to arrange for a tour of the weather facility on Saturday at 3:00 PM. The tour will show all the instruments and computer displays used by the forecasters to predict the weather. The tour will conclude with the launch of a weather balloon supporting an instrument cluster that will radio back to the NWS office the atmospheric conditions at various altitudes across north central Montana. So if you would like a “backstage pass” to the world of weather forecasting, be sure to stop by the NWS on Saturday around 2:30 PM so we can get the tour group organized and ready to go!

Here is an update on Skywarn Recognition Day 2013.

Due to the extreme cold weather we are currently experiencing, some adjustments are being made to our usual set-up. This year we will skip the set-up and use of the antenna trailer with the tri-band Yagi antenna. Friday's high temperature is forecasted to be only -12 degrees. The high temperature for Saturday is expected to be -3 degrees. These very cold temperatures make the assembly of the Yagi HF antenna and the deployment of the antenna trailer impractical.

So this year we will stick with the HF wire dipole antenna that we have always used with the second HF rig. There is a rope and pulley attached to the NWS tower that we use to hoist up the wire dipole. The coaxial cable is then routed alongside the building and through the cable port into the conference room where we operate from.

The tour around the inside of the NWS facility is still on for 3:00 PM on Saturday, 7 December 2013. For those who have never been to the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Great Falls, please be aware that it is a Federal building with restricted access. Visitors need to be "buzzed in" through the locked entrance door and then sign-in at the front desk. For this reason we are asking that everyone interested in the weather station tour please arrive around 2:30 PM. This gives us time to get you signed in and briefed on the radio operation going on in the conference room before the 3:00 PM tour start time. It also gives everyone time to remove a few layers of coats and gloves while warming up!

Please listen to the 146.740 MHz repeater for updates. The call sign at the NWS is WX7GTF. We will be setting up the HF wire dipole antenna and radio equipment sometime on Friday, 6 December 2013. Skywarn Recognition Day operations start at 5:00 PM on Friday and will run until 5:00 PM on Saturday.

See you there!