Just like that, it's August in Central Florida

I'm not saying that because of changing the page on the calendar. From the feel of being outside, it has been August for a few weeks. Heck, I know a guy who has a lawn service business and he was saying it has been full tilt summer since about day 1: the solstice back on June 21.  

A sure indicator is when the UV Index says 11 on a scale of 1-10 and uses the description, "Potentially Fatal in one hour." We know that's aimed at visitors to the area who aren't used to it and don't pay much attention.

There are many places where folks look forward to summer; it's time to go outside - maybe for the first time in months, enjoy warm, glorious days; garden, bike, picnic; maybe enjoy a book while lounging on the beach. Songs like Nat King Cole's classic "Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer" come to mind.

That's not here. Here, summer is something to be a bit more reserved about. If you live here, you can keep up with your regular life. If you were from a moderate place, not used to our heat and humidity, running or other outdoors activity could conceivably kill you. August marks the Dog Days of Summer; everything outdoors slows down. Fishing slows - sure the fish have to eat, but they become more active after dark. Animals are more sluggish. Ordinarily, it can be nasty here from about mid-July to almost the middle of September. The worst of it is August. 

The Minnesotans for Global Warming cherish the summer and endure the winter. Here it's the opposite. 

When we first got an HDTV around 20 years ago, Mrs. Graybeard and I naturally spent much of our TV time searching out HD programming.  One of the first movies we watched was "The Chronicles of Riddick". You have to understand this is not even particularly good scifi. It's a fun movie to watch, it's a visual treat, it's a fantastic display of special effects perfect for HD, but don't pay too much attention to the story. To quote a review (long gone from the net), "Furyans, Necromongers, Elementals, The Underverse, the Threshold...it so clearly wants to be epic that it forgets to tie all of these disparate worlds, universes and civilizations into a coherent story. (Director) Twohy clearly makes the mistake of not realizing that there is a huge difference between being grand and being simply confusing and the more ideas that are introduced, the more lumbering it becomes…"

We still watch it on the rare occasion when we run into it.

A large portion of the movie, and one of the longest action sequences, takes place on the planet Crematoria (many of the names in the movie are that cheesy).  Crematoria is a planet that has a tremendous temperature variation (probably an impossible amount) with daytime temperatures of 700F and night time temperatures 300 below zero. When the sunrise terminator sweeps through, the force of the heat gales that come with it is literally enough to blow you apart, disintegrating flesh and blowing pieces off until you die. There's a scene where a character (Purifier), a Furyan like Riddick, sacrifices himself by walking into the sunrise terminator and self-immolating. That's him trying to stand up to the gales while being set afire and having pieces of burning flesh blown off him.

The first time I saw that scene, it reminded me of the time we decided to do a long bike ride on July 4th (I think it was a hundred mile ride, but for sure it was a virtually all day ride). I mentioned it to Mrs. Graybeard who said, "sure, we've been out on days like that."

The National Weather Service publishes charts for heat index that show the amount of danger from the combination of heat and humidity.  This is one of their charts.  I've drawn a box around the typical morning conditions here.  This morning, when I was doing some work that required I go outside for a a little while, Weather Underground was reporting 86 with a "feels like" temperature of 96.  That's just about dead center of the black rectangle I added. In the afternoon, it pushes farther into the orange, maybe red.   

 

And that's what life here is like for August or maybe from Mid-July through Mid-September. Stay out of the sun. Do your outdoor activities near sunrise or sunset. Don't expose bare skin to the sun any longer than necessary - and even then, use sunscreen if you need to be out when the sun is intense, say from 10 AM to 4 PM. A protection factor (SPF) of 3 million is adequate. Without air conditioning and mosquito control, a technological civilization could not exist here.

Oh, and for those greenies and others pushing the idea that Americans are lazy for having air conditioning because they don't do that in Europe. Our latitude is well south of Europe, like toward the south end of the Sinai Peninsula. Sharm el-Sheikh airport is just a few miles south of our latitude. All of Europe is well north of us. 

Ran across a fun special events ham station last night

My usual hangout in ham radio has tended to be six meters, (50-54 MHz, and the first VHF band in the USA) and the last handful of days 6 has pretty much done one of its "oh, fuggedaboutit" intervals and nothing has been copyable around here. So last night I did one of those things I tend to do when 6 bores me out ofmy mind and dropped down to HF to see if there was anything going on. It was around 10PM here, so 0200 to around 0230 UTC.  

Dropped to 30m. Heard nothing new. 

Dropped to 80m. Likewise. 

Figuring 40m was likely to be the busiest/most crowded but with the same "nothing new" picture, I went up to 7.074 MHz. Very surprisingly, 40 not only wasn't as busy as I frequently find it, but there were a few stations that my copy of the JTAlert software told me I had never worked on 40. I worked three countries for the first time on 40 but that's not the story. The story is that one of them was a special event operation using the call sign GB64MOD. If you're familiar with the ham web site QRZ.com, this is what you see when you look up that call.  Here's a reduced copy of just one of the graphics on that page:

Their QRZ listing says they have a special web page for this event here. It adds this narrative:

GB64MOD ham radio special event station - Celebrates the spirit of the Mod movement through Amateur Radio.. classic British Culture modern communications with fellow Mods, Ham Operators and Shortwave listeners around the globe!

Calling Radio Amateurs worldwide! - Join us in celebrating Mod culture, music, fashion and more... Lets make this an annual event!

A truly modern Mod revival! Let us know your plans? 

Curtis MW0USK and Kevin MW9KJC.

Now, let me tell you why I'm emphasizing this. While I remember much of the "MOD" music, certainly The Who, and Small Faces that they make buttons for in that graphic, as well as many more, that's not what I'm seeing here. What I'm seeing is more evidence for the movement that says "this is why we were called GREAT Britain" with the implied celebration of being Great and not a place that should be wiped out by the suicidal embracing of immigrants who are wiping out the British culture and society.  Which leads to thinking, "we can be GREAT again and we should work at that." Notice there's nothing explicitly leaning in that direction on the website; just a reminder of those days for those who loved them. Make of it what you will.

If you're unfamiliar with special event stations like this they happen quite frequently. The biggest regular events these days are Parks On The Air (POTA) and Summits On The Air (SOTA). People collect certificates and QSLs from activities like all of these.