On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 23:09:40 GMT, "Roger Long"
om wrote:

Last weeks solar flare was a non-event except for "a few aircraft navigation
systems" as NPR put it. The one that erupted this morning and will reach
earth Wednesday or Thursday is believed by astronomers to be possibly the
largest since the invention of the integrated circuit.

Time to dig out the sectionals and that cute little plotter AOPA sends you
every year in your membership packet.

It'll be interesting to see how the different forms of navigation hold
up.

I understand when the X-Rays hit they had the astronauts move into the
most shielded areas of the ISS.

It was a full coronal mass ejection directed straight at earth
traveling at several thousand KM per second. They figure about 19
hours to get here. It should hit some time around 1500Z, or early to
mid morning here in the east.

It won't give us a visible aurora during the day but it may still be
active tomorrow night. They expect aurora as far south as California
and Florida. Just remember what a big geomagnetic storm did to Quebec
a while back. Dumped a major portion of their power grid and here we
are still recovering from Ohio's mistake. :-))

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)