To bypass the introduction, click at 3:22 for the start of the story! In the 1990s, while living in eastern Montana, I had the amazing experience of reuniting two soldiers that served in the Devil's Brigade. They both trained near Helena, Montana. One day, I was operating on the amateur radio shortwave Ten-Meter band, and a fellow answered me. A day later, when I again operated on the radio, another fellow answered my call. Both mentioned training near Helena, Montana, while serving--one in the Canadian Armed Forces, and the other in the American Armed Forces. Listen to my story, for the full details of this amazing experience I had as an amateur radio operator. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Special_Service_Force: The 1st Special Service Force (also called The Devil's Brigade, The Black Devils, The Black Devils' Brigade, and Freddie's Freighters), was an elite American-Canadian commando unit in World War II, under command of the United States Fifth Army. The unit was organized in 1942 and trained at Fort William Henry Harrison near Helena, Montana in the United States. The Force served in the Aleutian Islands, and fought in Italy, and southern France before being disbanded in December 1944. The modern American and Canadian special operations forces trace their heritage to this unit. In 2013, the United States Congress passed a bill to award the 1st Special Service Force the Congressional Gold Medal. Thank you for watching, commenting, and most of all, for subscribing. Please subscribe to my YouTube Channel: https://YouTube.com/NW7US Also, please click on the bell, to enable alerts so that when I post a new video, you will be notified. By subscribing, you will be kept in the loop for new videos and more. About me: http://me.nw7us.us Highlights: I am a contributing editor with propagation and space weather columns in: - CQ Amateur Radio Magazine http://www.cq-amateur-radio.com/ - The Spectrum Monitor http://www.thespectrummonitor.com/ - Radio User (UK) Magazine https://www.radioenthusiast.co.uk/store/subscriptions/radio-user/ Social media: Twitter: https://Twitter.com/NW7US (@NW7US) Tumblr: http://blog.nw7us.us Google+ http://nw7us.us/+ Instagram: https://instagram.com/nw7us Facebook: https://www.Facebook.com/NW7US Linux User #32405 - Since 1996 Copyright, Tomas Hood / NW7US ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFMplHjxy6s

Something big is happening on the sun. The sun's global magnetic field is about to flip, a sign that Solar Max has arrived. "It looks like we're no more than three to four months away from a complete field reversal," said solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system." The sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of "solar max" will be behind us, with half yet to come. Hoeksema is the director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitors the sun's polar magnetic fields. The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet's polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun. Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun's polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals—with a fourth in the offing. Solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, describes what happens: "The sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle." A reversal of the sun's magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun's magnetic influence (also known as the "heliosphere") extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space. When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the "current sheet." The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun's equator where the sun's slowly rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current. The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there's a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometers wide. Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet. During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball. As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet. Cosmic rays are also affected. These are high-energy particles accelerated to nearly light speed by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy. Cosmic rays are a danger to astronauts and space probes, and some researchers say they might affect the cloudiness and climate of Eart ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMFRe6ft4lI