HamTactical

Is he fishing with an antenna or using a fishing rod as an antenna?

Amateur Air Pollution Trackers Are Mapping Western Wildfire Smoke
Using thousands of PurpleAir sensors, a community of tech enthusiasts and health-conscious residents are capturing a real-time portrait of an environmental crisis.

It’s something of a ham radio network of the 21st century, several members said. Like those amateur shortwave radio operators, who tap into official emergency communication lines to assist in calamity, PurpleAir owners are “at the ready in the event of a disaster, supplying data for everyone to view,” said Gary Brickley, a retired union stagehand who runs a PurpleAir sensor and weather station from his hilltop home in San Francisco. There is a fair amount of overlap between the two worlds: Several air quality trackers are also hams, including Dave Pacek, a retired Air Force intelligence analyst who runs a PurpleAir sensor (as well as a seismometer) at his Sacramento home.

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Amateur Air Pollution Trackers Are Mapping Western Wildfire Smoke Using thousands of PurpleAir sensors, a community of tech enthusiasts and health-conscious residents are capturing a real-time portrait of an environmental crisis.