Seven Minutes of Terror to the Surface of Mars

 Compressed into five minutes of narrated video at today's NASA APOD.  You should go watch this now.

ps: Seems to have worked.

The Call of Marconi

 "When the ionosphere was right, They could talk from continent to continent through the sky; but when the ionosphere was wrong, They could not talk to their next-door neighbor.  Not that They ever chose to do so anyway."  -H.P. Maxim, "The Call of Marconi"

Don't struggle with this – either you get it or you don't.

Modeling, Covid, Herd Immunity, and Are We There Yet?

 Here's a grab-bag of articles and links I've found interesting in the last few weeks:

The Hard Lessons of Modeling the Coronavirus Pandemic at Quanta

University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation: front page | COVID-19

 One bright data scientist doing his best, using machine learning: Interview | Projections | Path to Herd Immunity

I was quietly playing this game too last spring and summer, using genetic algorithms and GitHub data.  It was... interesting, but not especially enlightening.  Watching the weekly medical reporting cycle add a spike-and-dip to the numbers while listening to the media scream "we're all gonna die!" and "pandemic's over!" twice a week in time with medical data dumps was initially amusing, but mostly frustrating.  I mean, isn't basic data smoothing when an obvious cycle is built into the reporting... obvious?

I guess not.  Anyway, those last three links are the best analysis and forecasting I've seen lately.

Half-Way There?

Article at NPR: Why the Pandemic is 10 Times Worse than You Think

TLDR: A research team at Columbia University is using sophisticated models to estimate the total number of people to date who have had covid-19 in the U.S., as opposed to the more commonly-reported number of confirmed infections.  Their estimate is 36%.  

That is half-way to a reasonable number for the herd immunity threshold.  Also, they estimate that the number of daily new infections is around 40% of the peak in late December.  Pandemic collapse?  I sure hope so, but epidemiologists and numerical modelers have been fooled more than once by this virus.  The best we can say is that, for the moment, the numbers are heading the right way.

The above-linked article is short, and filled with caveats that you really need to read.  This is no time to let up from being careful, and we all need to get whatever vaccine is available ASAP.  However, given the numbers and trends described in the article, the overall news it delivers is quite hopeful.  I wonder why the negative, fearful tone used there.

Now I have to say it: Are we there yet?

More Tate's Hell-acious Doings

 Hiked the south side of the High Bluff Trail between Eastpoint and Carrabelle today.  It's beautiful, at least the south side which I can vouch for.  I hear the north side is flatter, wetter, and with more jeep road sections.  I'm going to give that a try next time out; hike it north first then loop back on the south side.  The most noteworthy thing about the trail is that it's through a forest grown over old sand dunes.  Very hilly, with interesting oak hammocks between piny ridges.  It really must be seen to be believed.  In the meantime, this site has some excellent pictures as well as discussion of the trail, far better than any that I took today.  However, below are a few things they missed.  As always, click to embiggen.

Nice bridge.  Oh BTW, you will get your feet wet on this trail, no way around it.  Just no dangerous creek crossings to fret about, and this bridge was a help.

Very tannin-ous water.  Probably good to drink, if you dig a nice bitter IPA.

This oak hammock, it was like a dream from childhood of an enchanted forest.  Too bad that vibe doesn't quite pop in this snapshot, but trust me, coming in from the bright sun it was every bit as spooky as a full moon on Halloween.

Mysterious lichens.  Wish I knew more about 'em, they seem to be able to live on nothing more than bare white sand and an occasional bit of pine straw.

WFD 2021 Wrapped

 With nice weather today and thunderstorms in the forecast for all day tomorrow, and not wanting to return with a truckload of wet gear, I just treated this year's Winter Field Day as a pleasant afternoon in the Apalachicola National Forest at the Hickory Landing boat launch.  Made about a dozen contacts, most of them digital but some SSB voice, scattered across the 20m & 40m bands.  Also tried 15m & 10m, but they were dead-dead.  Used the lightweight QRP rig, then packed along a bunch of other "well I might use it" crap too.  Even hauling to and from the car, it was too much on the daypack, but it wasn't too far so it all worked out.  Note to self next time: No, you don't need to bring the laptop charger and a spare LiFePO4 batt for a three hour trip to the woods.  Didn't really matter this time though.

Technically WFD runs through to 2pm tomorrow afternoon.  However as previously mentioned, thunderstorms.  Pretty much makes it a wrap, at least for me.

Here, have some pictures:

The river from the campground road.

Artesian well.  Wonder who drilled this one?  And how long's it been running?

The boat ramp.

Another view of the ramp, from farther up.

The gear.  You can just see the feed transformer on the Par EFT-10/20/40 antenna, along with the wire angling upward.  This time out it was pitched as an inverted V, which is how I'd tuned the thing originally. While it's resonant on those three bands, it's kinda narrow on 40.  With the LDG tuner, all of the 40m band is available, along with 15m & 17m -- definitely worth the extra weight and hassle.

Six Minutes of Sci-Fi Horror

 DECOMISSIONED, at Vimeo.  Six Minutes.

Synopsis: A "suitsat," made from radio components stuffed into a decommissioned space suit and launched off the ISS (yes, this has actually been done a couple of times), takes on a life of its own and doesn't take kindly to being discarded.  The station commander's eyes are perfect: first wide-open in wonder at the universe, then wide-open in terror.