Solar flare is suppose to hit earth Tuesday morning. Ranked a 3 out of 5 on NASA's scale. High altitude Flights near polar regions warned.
I wonder what it will do to radios and antennas? Anyone have any ideas?
If it is strong enough it will fry your radios. This is going to be a border line X class flare which is the strongest we can get. And it is headed directly for us. I have a few of my radios in a faraday cage already just in case. I don't think this one will be big enough to do it though.
Regarding Faraday cages, what are you using exactly? I have heard that you can simply use a file cabinet.. Basically a Faraday cage is just something that is surrownded by metal on all sides, so.. should work?
I use the double faraday method. I put the radio in its box and wrap that with foil. Then I place that box inside of a Galvanized Steel trash can. Make sure you line the inside of the trash can with cardboard to keep the foil wrapped boxes from contacting the metal trash can.
A file cabinet is not ideal because it has so many cracks around the doors. But it could be modified to work with some foil tape or something. You could test it by putting a radio or cell phone inside. If the radio quits working or the phone does not ring when you call it then it is not allowing RF in.
This seems like pointless overkill to me. A Faraday cage does NOT require solid metal, and indeed Faraday himself demonstrated his first cage made of open wire mesh. See the article at Faraday cage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, for example. A double Faraday cage will perform no better than a single one.
A small crack will make no noticeable difference.
And the storms seen so far are not big enough to justify even this. The big event of 2003 didn't fry many computers or radios, it was far larger than the current ones. Far more damage was done by the great electrical blackout in the northeastern part of North America which was unrelated and happened months before the big flare. Lightning is a far bigger hazard in most of the world.
Copper mesh does indeed work just as good, But it is very expensive. Galvanized trash can costs $25 and works just as well. A Double Faraday is just extra protection. I see no harm in it.
If RF can make its way through a small crack in a filing cabinet then so can an EMP.
What's all the hubbub, bub? You make it sound like The Day The Earth Stood Still but no satellites fell from the sky, no power failures, no telephones melted (oh, that was Failsafe) and Gort was nowhere around for me to tell him Klaatu barada nikto.
It is not extra protection, a single Faraday cage offers perfect protection. Adding another one does nothing but waste money and/or time that could be spent doing something actually useful. The harm is admittedly slight, but it is not zero.
But if it is an all metal cabinet with the drawers closed, the energy will be totally blocked, cracks or no.
If a really dangerous CME happens we now have spacecraft that will warn us one or two days in advance. Plenty of time to wrap our electronic devices in aluminum foil and disconnect them from everything.
Just keep checking SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids every morning and you'll have lots of warning.
Yesterday's magnetic storm was a 1 out of 5, officially classed as "minor". To see what the scale means see NOAA Space Weather Scales
I am not going to argue back and forth with you in a public forum So we will have to agree to disagree on these two points.
My apologies for unfairly using actual facts and evidence.