1	SID Observing Detecting solar flares by radio
2	Introduction The price of amateur astronomy is eternal vigilance! Can monitor for disturbances of the ionosphere 24 hours a day – even from your basement! Requires relatively little equipment.
3	The Ionosphere
4	NAA @ 24.0 kHz Established in 1961 Puts out 1,000,000 W
5	SID Antennae Lots of wire! Number of turns, gauge unimportant. Tuned by capacitors
6	An AAVSO SID Trace
7	Basic Components Loop antenna Preamp – 300 to 900x Rectification (and smoothing) Recorder
8	My Loop 1.5m diameter 8 turns of 14-gauge house wire from Home Depot Conductors connected “serially” Formed on crossed 1x2’s and plastic lawn edging!
9	My Circuit Based on design by Cap Hossfield Very few components!
10	My Recorder Currently an old Win95 machine bought for $35. Serial 10-bit A/D converter from www.dataq.com
11	RFI Surprising sources of radio frequency interference! Light dimmers are a MAJOR problem! Computer monitors, CO detector also significant. Eventually move loop away from the house.
12	My First Trace – May 8^th!
13	John Kielkopf’s SID Site
14	Future Improvements Use PIC microcontroller chip as interface and A/D converter. Reduce home RFI Move loop out into yard Serve plots up to Web in real time Sample more frequently than every second to see if SGR/GRB’s correlate
15	Useful SID Links The AAVSO Solar Bulletin/SID Supplement that got me going on all of this. Note that C1 should be around 0.020 microFarads, not 0.0022. John Kielkopf’s site near Louisville, KY. (The WWW routing seems somewhat unreliable.) A SID receiver made by some NJAA folk. A nice SID setup in Richardson, TX. One level up has lots of other cool stuff, too! An inexpensive 10-bit serial A/D converter with software.