Overnight WSPR Diary, 12-13/01/2018

Geomagnetic conditions were quiet in terms of Kp, but a moderate northerly deviation in the Z component occurred from around 14UT to 00UT.  A small increase in the X component occurred in the 23:30 - 00UT period.

IRF/Kiruna.

The statistical aurora remained essentially flat throughout the night, typically looking like this, with the usual magnetic midnight 'bulge' in activity working its way around:

DX spots from the US ceased again at a much later time than the previous two days.


The last spot was K5XL at 23:10 (-22dB from 2W).

Unlike earlier days, there were a number of spots from Scandinavia.  I wonder if this is due to the northerly deviation in the vertical component, or something else?

SA7DLC/M at 23:58 - 00:00UT (two spots)  I am discounting this as the /M operation and two spots probably indicate a limited, temporary transmission.

SM7ETW from 00:00UT (none before) until 01:56UT:

LA9PMA was heard 23:20 (-15dB from 2W), 01:24UT (20dB from 2W) and 01:44UT (-24dB from 2W).

IK2Il heard once at 23:12UT (-20dB from 5W)

IU1DZZ heard once at 23:24UT (-17dB from 5W)
OH5XO heard once, also at 23:24UT (-25dB from 500mW)

N0NHJ, who is actually operating from the Antarctic peninsula, was heard eight times from 01:22 - 01:40UT all at around -25dB from 1W.

Let's look at N0NHJ a bit closer, because, for once, one other UK station (G0LUJ, perhaps relevantly, just up the Irish Sea coast from me) heard him, where, except for a PY2 station, nobody else across the globe did in this local overnight period.  Geomagnetically, all the lines were flat at this time:

Here's the terminator position (with greyline set to astronomical twilight, rather than civil or nautical) at 01:08UT:

Explaining that path is rather problematic, given the dominance of darkness for nearly all the path, albeit a fine, all-sea path (if that's the one that the signal took).

Plotting this on a globe might yield some understanding, if I overlay the general position of the auroral magnetic midnight bulge:

Is the position of the bulge now such that the signal may be being somehow conveyed into the greyline area over the far west of the Americas, which also happens to run to the Antarctic Peninsula?  Perhaps.

Other than that,

ON7KB came in at 02:50 at a strong -09dB from 5W.

SV8LMM, always an early signal, was heard from 03:40UT onwards (-21dB from 500mW), although at this time of the morning, this is an indication of grazing reflections from an early sunlit ionosphere as it starts to appear (from a radio perspective) on the horizon, I think.  So I won't investigate this one.