Wednesday 28 August 2019

More unusual propagation effects

Last night again produced some spectacular swings in received WSPR signals at 14MHz from short skip distances.  You can read about the earlier event here.

Here's the example of ON7KB, showing enhancements of up to 50dB, in very short, repeating bursts (you can also see multiple spots within most of the peak lines, typical of very strong signals):

This is very unusual and needs some explaining.  Any ideas?  The geomagnetic field was only slightly disturbed at high latitudes, leading to no more than Kp ~2:

Z field component, Tromoso Geophysical Observatory.



4 comments:

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello John, you would think it is a kind of skywave propagation. Or backscatter/groundscatter? Strange it is! Have you ever considered that there has been a russian HF heating experiment going on? You can read some results on researchgate.net. Too much for my brain, but could be interesting for you. 73, Bas

John, EI7GL said...

It looks like the Sporadic-E footprint moving around with short skip.

I was on 28 MHz all night on WSPR and I had heard plenty of Sp-E signals. I also heard ON7KB on 28 MHz.

Timestamp Call MHz SNR Drift Grid Pwr Reporter RGrid km
2019-08-28 03:04 ON7KB 28.126091 +2 -1 JO21ei 5 EI7GL IO51tu 881
2019-08-28 02:56 ON7KB 28.126090 -16 0 JO21ei 5 EI7GL IO51tu 881
2019-08-28 02:32 ON7KB 28.126091 -19 -1 JO21ei 5 EI7GL IO51tu 881
2019-08-28 01:24 ON7KB 28.126093 -2 -1 JO21ei 5 EI7GL IO51tu 881
2019-08-28 00:18 ON7KB 28.126095 -26 0 JO21ei 5 EI7GL IO51tu 881

As expected, the signal strength is all over the place.

Photon said...

Thanks John! Very interesting. I might submit this event to the HF section of RadCom when they ask for items next time around.

Photon said...

Thanks Bas! I will have a read later. It's all very odd, but as EI7GL says below, and I can see all the way to 6m, there's a lot of strong Es right now.