Wednesday 8 July 2020

Fake News!

OMG!, as the youth say these days.

No sooner did I think I had seen the last of idiotic people from the 50MHz community than I received a reply from another one.

Noctilucent clouds.  Apparently, if you have personally never seen them, they don't actually exist for anyone!

In this email, the dear operator wasn't initially entirely dismissive of 'these clouds of [mine]'.  Clouds of mine?  Hmmm.  Sounds familiar.

He then proceeded to tell me how people got "very excited" on chat rooms about the appearance of NLC, because they believed there may be a link between them and propagation at 50MHz.

"Yet, I have gone out to look and seen nothing?"

That inclusion of an incongruous question mark is very social media-esque.  It's a different way of saying "If these clouds really exist, how come I haven't seen any?"  The 'I' is more important than anything else, in other words.

The man later revealed he had higher ground to his, erm, north and north east - precisely the area that NLC are normally seen, typically at low elevations!

I patiently referred the gentleman in question to various databases and scientific papers spanning decades, should he wish to see proper evidence for the existence of NLC, seeing as, he claimed, the weather was always too poor for him to check for himself. 

Well, the weather has certainly been poor this year.  But I'm not quite sure what this man's been doing in other years.  Probably looking up into the sky whilst it was still full daylight, I guess...



1 comment:

PE4BAS, Bas said...

What can I say LOL. He has seen the photos didn't he. Or does he believe they are "photoshopped" ;-). I have to admit that I did not see any NLC this year. That doesn't tell much....however you know what we have seen last year....73, Bas