2007 SKYWARN Recognition Day
November 30th 6 PM through December 1st 6 PM

The Huntsville Alabama, National Weather Service Forecast Office will be participating in the 2007 SKYWARN Recognition Day. This event started by the National Weather Service and the American Radio Relay League, celebrates contributions to public safety made by volunteer SKYWARN participants. NWS offices frequently acquire real time information from radio equipped weather spotters – especially during periods of severe or adverse weather. These spotters provide valuable ground truth reports for phenomena such as hail, high winds, tornadoes, flash flooding, and snow fall reports. Those reports are used by our staff to prepare and verify statements and warnings

During this event, SKYWARN operators at NWS offices around the nation make contact with amateur radio operators nationally and around the world. Contact will be attempted with as many participating NWS offices as possible via amateur radio. We will operate under our call sign - WX4HUN.

This event takes place the first Saturday of December for 24 hours from 0000-2400Z (Universal Coordinated Time). Locally, this will be from 6 PM CST Friday evening through 6 PM CST Saturday evening December 1st. A majority of the contacts are made via the High Frequency (aka. Short Wave) bands 80-10 meters (~3.500-29.7 MHz). Contacts will also be made via the VHF amateur frequencies on the 6 meter band (~50 MHz) and 2 meter band (~144-148 MHz). Most contacts in this event are made by phone mode (voice).

Other modes such as Continuous Wave (Morse Code) and digital modes such as RTTY and PSK31, along with the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) like IRLP, EchoLink and "D-STAR, KI4PPF C" may be used too.

The North Alabama SKYWARN repeater system will be activated during this event.

For more information, please contact:

Robert Boyd KC5ZJO, Senior Forecaster  
Tim Troutman, Warning Coordination Meteorologist  
Doug Hilton WD0UG, ARRL AL  
Greg Sarratt W4OZK, ARRL AL