What's to do when it's blowing a 100km/h gale?
Well, a bit of lockdown exercise, coupled with a bit of 24MHz radio.
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| Not a pleasant day at the coast! |
The 12m band was not really open to great DX distances for TX whilst I was at the coast, but I did get a good signal across to India, and had fantastic receptions from Indonesia and Australia. Unfortunately, I couldn't hang around very long to wait for the band to open more.
Still, pretty amazing for an Ampro stick and 10W again!
Overnight WSPR receive-only campaign continues with the following results:
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| 14MHz reception of VK3QN, 2020 October 29-30. |
The signal from LY3LT was caught dropping dramatically as the first, very sharp disturbance occurred around 16UT (this could also simply be the transition to night conditions), then being lost from ~19:30UT until it reappears between ~23:30 and 02:30UT. I think the signal would have ordinarily disappeared from around 16-17UT under quiet conditions, and the weak 'ripples' in the reappeared signals are in response to the magnetic field:
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| 14MHz received signal from LY3LT 2020 October 29-30 |
Meanwhile, the disturbance produced sensitive and strong enhancements of the signal from F1JSC, which are definitely in response to the magnetic field:
DK7KA also showed a response to the field disturbances around the midnight period:
Interesting to see new guidance from the UK Civil Aviation Authority, released only this afternoon, about the potential effects of space weather.
Quite an interesting read, with plenty about radio communications, of course.
No doubt about it. The Sun is waking up. Just look at those well developed spots!
Higher HF nice and busy. Amazingly narrow Es path to the US (plus a path to ZS) at 28MHz from my location when using a dipole-like pattern from my 14MHz vertical delta loop at its first harmonic. The width of the path is only ~265km as it crosses Newfoundland (ignoring the single Florida spot):
Slightly disturbed conditions (KP~3) to the west of the UK (shown by magnetometry from eastern Greenland, Z component), gave rise to a very long period 14MHz reception of VK3QN overnight:
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| VK3QN 14MHz WSPR received at MW1CFN, 2020 October 27-28 |
A significant difference, notably in the timing of the peak long path signal, compared to the previous day:
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| VK3QN 14MHz WSPR received at MW1CFN, 2020 October 26-27 |
The plot of received distances shows how the band was otherwise dead to all except the VK3QN signal, during the depths of night on 27-28 October:
Continuing IT upgrades here at Copper Mountain HQ, I was amazed by two parcels that arrived together this morning.
One contained what turned out to be a huge 31-type split ferrite, which I ordered from Hamgoodies. This was something I wanted to stick on the end of the heavy duty earth safety cable that is bonded to an RF earth stake outside the shack, and goes all the way back to the domestic AC input to the house. This was prompted by a letter in a recent Practical Wireless, and this potential for noise hadn't (but should have) occurred to me before then.
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| A tiny 500GB SSD drive next to a huge type-31 ferrite! The ferrite's full ID is HG-31PRBSLVR |
Because our earth system is a Protective Multiple Earth (PME) type, then this safety earth connection can pick up mains noise, although I certainly haven't seen any sign of this causing problems with my endless overnight WSPR monitoring.
Needless to say, you should think about, understand and implement your RF and AC earth systems very well before sticking copper rods in the ground. If you get it wrong, or do yourself something that you should by law get a professional to do, then if your house catches fire, your insurance may well not pay out. This is very serious, and has been wrongly explained in both RadCom and Practical Wireless recently! The following image depicts PME, and none of this article is advice or guidance:
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| PME mains connections. Each RF ground rod you install must have a separate heavy duty AC earth back to the chocolate block (or equivalent connection) depicted above. Seek professional guidance! |
The other package was the complete opposite: it felt like an empty Amazon cardboard packet, but was supposed to contain a 500GB SDD drive. Remarkably, there really was a drive in there! I guess the age of the magnetic disk drive is largely over now, even though you could hardly say they were unreliable.
Another fairly disturbed geomagnetic day brought enhancements for the 14MHz band, as evidenced by the 5W WSPR signal from VK3QN overnight (this large array is beaming long path Europe.)
Signals from VK3QN came in until 23:40UT, and then vanished until 01:30UT, where a very broad peak developed over the coming hours. This is in marked contrast to the quiet conditions curve, which is very much sharper and later.
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| VK3QN's very broad, early reception at MW1CFN 2020 October 26-27 |
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| For comparison, three days' worth of VK3QN reception from two weeks ago, showing that the peak signal on 27/10/2020 was reached when it would, under quiet conditions, be only just beginning to appear. |
As the screengrab from DXAtlas shows, 01:30UT is not a time when we would expect any signal by long path:
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| Situation as VK3QN appeared at 01:30UT (DXAtlas, with permission.) |
Here's the indicative SNR forecast for a 130 degree-beaming VK3 antenna at 01UT (via Proppy), which doesn't take real-time geomagnetic conditions (or a 12-element array!) into account:
Another anomaly was the onset of receiving PT2HFC at 8729km from just before 01UT (I checked he was transmitting before this, which he was) when Brazil would, under quiet conditions, be entirely absent from my receptions from very late evening onwards:
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| Anomalous reception of PT2HFC at 14MHz |
Meanwhile, TF3HZ, who would also not normally appear overnight, showed an interesting variation in signal, notably around 01UT, coincident with a fairly sudden restoration of the field - something that is found frequently in these analyses. Long horizontal lines are periods of non-reception:
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| Reception of TF3HZ at 14MHz. |
