1000th Post

Somehow, I've reached the milestone of 1000 blogposts!  

Should I make it special?  A review of those all-time greats?  Maybe not!

Let's return to some WSPR results, grabbed from the beach again, late last night.

It turns out I should have been more prepared, because the Kp was rising to quite high levels.  Sadly, I hadn't paid much attention to the geomagnetic forecasts, although I could, towards the end of my listening period, see that the propagation had become very short, with many European and local UK stations suddenly making an appearance.

The 14MHz WSPR signal from VK3QN, the main reason for the outing, was attenuated by ~6dB relative to two evenings ago, when the field was quiet, although the benefits of the beach remain just as strong.  Happily, my home set-up kept going this time around, and did very well, relative to the other UK stations who were also hearing VK3QN in this period:

Big disturbance!  Kp reached ~6.  Image: IRF, Kiruna.

The disturbance in the magnetic field was well seen in the case of 8P9DH (again, 14MHz), where his signal dropped off a cliff as the field reached peak southerly deviation, and started to rebound to quieter, but still disturbed conditions (2E0PYB's straight line is explained by only two spots, at either end of the period).

UK station receptions of 8P9DH

 

It was too cold for me to stay beyond 01:30 local time (00:30UT) at the beach last night, so I rely on 2E0PYB's very good station to show how the propagation became very short as the magnetic field rang to the beat of the Sun.  Note the interesting peak around 03:15UT - a single reception of K5XL (-23dB) -which seems to be another one of those well-noted sudden DX spots that appear as the field goes from south to north in a field restoration:

Spot ranges for 2E0PYB, 2020 August 30-31

For comparison, here was 2E0PYB's receptions for the field-quiet conditions of 2020 August 28-29: