Scandinavian Spots

The night of 06-07 December 2018 was quite interesting at 14MHz WSPR.

Whilst geomagnetically quiet, mid-winter evenings now bring essentially no propagation after about 21:00UT, last night brought a lot of spots from Sweden and Norway. 

The main stations being heard repeatedly were: SM0HPL, LA6GH, OH2BC and OH6MQM, all at very low SNR, typically in the -20 to -28dB range from <=500mW outputs.  Other than SM0HPL, none of these operators provide even the remotest hint on QRZ.com or WSPRnet about their antenna systems; there's not much point in having a WSPRnet user page that simply says: 'WSPRlite' under station information!

Interestingly, I was hearing OK1RPL (100mW, also absolutely no information on antenna system) at the amazing SNR of -08dB at 00:20UT, which was repeated at 01:40UT at -09dB. 

My blogging colleague, Bas, PE4BAS, wrote an interesting post about good signals from the Scandinavian area on 28MHz yesterday - the same region I was receiving those weak 14MHz spots from all night long last night.  Maybe there's a link there?

Looking at the Norwegian line stackplot, there's not a lot, other than perhaps pre-disturbance enhancement (things became wobbly into the morning), to link the 14MHz overnight spots with geomagnetic activity.

Once again, explanation for these things mostly escapes me, but does reinforce my determination to put a HF SDR receiver on my Santa's list this year!

Maybe Emcomms has a point?

Yesterday morning, I decided to do battle with local bureaucracy on the phone.  I had some documents to be certified, and all was not going according to plan.

Curiously, when I dialled the number on my mobile phone, it was cut off immediately.  The signal strength meter was showing an empty symbol.  All very unusual, as outages of the mobile phone service are extremely rare.

Later in the day, with any SMS message being sent about three times to a recipient, it emerged that O2, a major mobile network provider and other-services carrier in the UK, had suffered a big problem with its packet switching software, reportedly provided by Ericsson.  The problem wasn't resolved until the early hours of this morning.

O2 fails, big time.  Image: WikiCommons/Wally Reardon

Now, I am the first to be quite dismissive of 'emcomms' organisations who advance the view that amateur radio can somehow save civilisation from catastrophe.  For one thing, those kinds of organisations are too often populated by people who like to wear fluorescent jackets and give the appearance of being authority figures.

Though I make no comment or imputation about the individual in this specific image, the overall appearance is indicative of what I find objectionable about emcomms people:

No, this is not a policeman...

That all said, there is a flip side.  Local authorities in the UK used to work in reasonably close cooperation with Raynet and their ilk in the past.  Over recent years, this cooperation has faded away.  One emergency planning officer at a local council even told me that authorities had been instructed by central government not to bother staying in touch with amateur radio emcomms people any more.  One of the reasons for this was that "everybody has a mobile phone now", heavily implying that the kind of total failure O2 suffered for the best part of a day yesterday could never happen.

The failure of mobile networks is perhaps rare, but not unknown.  Several US cities hit by hurricanes and floods have suffered outages in recent years, including a protracted failure in Florida in October.

As many news outlets covered yesterday, the increasing volume of calls and data being handled by these mobile networks has pushed for ever-greater complexity in the software used.   Also of concern, beyond technical failures, is the increasing involvement of foreign companies, notably Huawei, in UK communications infrastructure.  And then there is the Russian government, currently on an aggressive mission to probe and disrupt UK interests; just on my doorstep, Russian submarines are being monitored by AWACS and other systems in the Irish Sea on a regular basis.

So there is plenty of scope for things to go wrong, and perhaps go wrong in more and different ways into the near future.  As it happens, this morning sees a violent storm hit the northern half of the UK, which will likely increase demand on the mobile network - if it is available.

Now, amateur radio is no solution to people's en-masse calls and messages when the main systems fail.  But for essential, emergency communications, maybe local authorities would do well to come round to the view, as I have, that amateur radio could in fact provide a very useful, no-cost emergency communications backup.  Certainly, they should not turn their back on what is potentially available.

The Curious Case of... HC6PE

HC6PE continued to be spotted hours and hours after normal propagation on 14MHz had died away last night (05/06 Dec, 2018).

On this occasion, the anomalous spots came here at 23:26UT and 01:48UT.  The only other two dark side stations hearing HC6PE were the top-performing EA8BFK and OE9GHV.

The timing of my spots coincided very nicely, first with the field restoring to quiet levels, and then as it dipped to slightly disturbed conditions.  OE9GHV heard HC6PE throughout the initial disturbed period.  The field remained unsettled after this later disturbance began.

Image: Tromso Geophysical Laboratory.

I am sure this propagation mode is related to field aligned irregularities of some sort, quite possibly located at extremely high altitudes.  The curious thing is that the propagation is clearly transient, yet stable enough over the couple of minutes necessary for a successful WSPR spot to be reported.

The Overnight WSPR Report, 2018 December 04-05.

DX stations at 14MHz ceased to be heard here at 21:54UT (8P9HA, -22dB SNR/2500Hz).

8P9HA, invariably the last DX station heard here, typically an hour or so after the last US-based station, shows the benefits not only an all-sea path, but of having both antenna systems in excellent locations.  LX1DQ and I were the only two stations outside North America hearing the 8P station at this time (since 2 hours). 

Doesn't get much better as a radio location - QTH area of 8P9HA.

The only other DX station heard late into the night, as is often the case, and without much by way of a convincing explanation for propagation at this time, was HC6PE, last heard at 00:50 (-21dB SNR/2500Hz).  Unlike the case of 8P9HA, HC6PE was being heard by a small number of stations in Europe as late as 01:54 (OE9GHV, -22dB SNR/2500Hz).

The path at this late hour from HC (and 8P) to Europe is well worth musing over; it is an extraordinarily unusual propagation for the near-mid winter, night-time hemisphere.  There was moderate geomagnetic disturbance at around this time, which does tend to produce electrons of the correct energy for these anomalous spots. 

It's tempting, without anything other than speculation, to wonder if the signal from HC is travelling up the greyline to the north, into the morning hemisphere, then being directed by the auroral oval to the west, over northern Russia.  That would be quite spectacular if true, though the coherence of the signal would surely suffer to the point of making this path impossible.  Even if it's FAI or other, patchy ionisation that is responsible for a more direct path, it's still quite remarkable, given the difference in latitude between the stations.

Image: DX Atlas, with permission.

Stackplot of geomagnetic conditions, Greenland East line.  Image: Tromso Geophysical Laboratory.

Aurora forecast.  Image: NOAA.

Polar non-summer mesospheric echoes...

Interesting to note today that the MST radar in mid-Wales is seeing reasonably weak echoes from mesospheric height. 

These echoes ('Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes - PMSE), as their name suggests, occur mostly during midsummer, when they are often (but not always) associated with noctilucent cloud.  They are also often associated with Es.  Accordingly, when they occur during winter, they are termed 'non-summer', or sometimes just 'winter'.

It's not clear how these winter echoes come to exist. Infrasound from the sea surface and meteoric debris are both thought to play a part, though there is a lot of work to do to figure it all out.

If you have an interest, this Facebook page is quite interesting in relation to mesospheric echoes in general.  A more challenging, academic read can be found here.

Barbados anomaly!

Last night saw some more moderate geomagnetic activity.  The aurora seems to have been more extensive than the previous evening.

Images: NOAA;IRF, Kiruna.

In general, this additional geomagnetic activity seems to have suppressed propagation at 14MHz late at night, with the exception of a handful of very short-skip, often strong signals from PA and F, and a signal that kept running in from Barbados, an all-sea path to me, presumably assisted in the later evening by electrons precipitating on the night side.  8P9HA stopped being heard as soon as the Z component shot back to quieter conditions.

Again, it's difficult to figure out why 8P9HA (or the other, short-skip stations) was singled out from amongst all the other potential signals.

Path and terminator at 23:10UT, 02/12/2018.  DX Atlas, with permission.

More geomagnetic anomalies!

Last evening saw the onset of what was predicted to reach G1 geomagnetic conditions.  Unfortunately, things didn't get quite that rough, but a nice disturbance did take place, as shown below:

Image: IRF/Kiruna

At 19:26UT, N1ECP in Maine was the last station I heard on 14MHz WSPR.  I was actually watching the screen at the time, and the waterfall became quite dead, with not even much by way of partial traces appearing. I did notice the occasional strong WSPR signal burst (looking like a meteor scatter signal at VHF) that lasted only three of four seconds, followed by a natural 'whooshing' noise.

Aurora visibility at 23:30UT.  Image: NOAA.

At 21:14UT, 8P9HA appeared and, over the coming few minutes built up to -20dB SNR/2500Hz.

Shortly thereafter, HC6PE appeared.  He built up to a remarkable -08dB SNR/2500Hz at 22:10UT.  Keep in mind the geometry of his station and mine, relative to the sunlit atmosphere, no part of which has been visible from Wales at this point for maybe 2 hours or so:

Path to HC6PE and terminator at 22:10UT, 2018 December 01.  Image with permission, DX Atlas.

My RX spots at the times relevant to this post.

Not only this, but you will note that WC2S - all the way from Los Angeles - makes an appearance, if only just, at -29dB SNR/2500Hz, at 22:32UT.

Even more intriguingly,  K6MCS appears shortly thereafter, but only briefly.  You may recall this post concerning K6MCS making an identical sort of appearance in early January this year.

The paths are interesting to consider.  The model for the aurora shows a small patch further to the south in the Atlantic than the main oval.  These appear regularly, so they don't seem to be artefacts of the model, though that is a possibility that needs checking out with NOAA.  If this patch is real, it might indicate a limited area that could have facilitated propagation to HC6PE.

The path for K6MCS seems to go through dense regions of the aurora.  Clearly, with so many (as of this morning, 300) WSPR stations active on 14MHz, there remains something to explain about how that station seems to make a regular appearance under disturbed conditions.

As always, any ideas welcome under comments!