Overnight WSPR report, 09-10/12/2018

Very little to report, other than LU3DJ was still doing very well, last heard here at 22:30UT (-23dB SNR/2500Hz).

The only two sudden appearances were from ON7KO at 22:30UT and 01:24UT.  G0CCL also appeared from nowhere at 01:24UT.  Nothing was then heard until the pre-dawn period.

The mid-Europe field looked like this:

Image: Tromso Geophysical Laboratory.

The modelled aurora, zoomed in on Europe, at 22:30UT was:

 Image: NOAA.

With the auroral oval extending to the northern UK, I suppose it's no surprise that a couple of short skip signals came in, though one might have expected a few more.

The timing of the first ON7 spot coincides nicely with the peak of a sharp Z dip to the south, which leads me to think that precipitating electrons drifting across the pole from the day side were responsible.  The second, 01:24UT spot was probably a small patch of auroral E.

The amazing reach of LU3DJ

I was amazed at this series of spots yesterday (09/12/18) on 14MHz from LU3DJ, who was transmitting just 10mW.  The effect of the grey line also shows up very nicely:

Signal from LU3DJ, 10mW, as received by MW1CFN, vpol delta loop (twin fed).

Conditions at around peak signal (19:50UT) from LU3DJ.  DX Atlas, with permission.

AA7FV - unusual spot

There was another moderate geomagnetic field disturbance in the early evening last night, up to Kp=3.  Into the morning here, the ring current of the auroral oval was quite high, up at around 38GW.  I didn't receive any unusual spots (14MHz), other than one or two, very short skip signals from no further than PA/ON.

Interestingly, at 09:00UT (actually, also a little earlier, but the spot didn't make it to the database), I spotted AA7FV, who uses a large rhombic antenna with one of its two main lobes towards Europe.

This is another anomalous spot worth considering.  First, the first vestiges of an illuminated ionosphere lay 5500km to the east (over the southern tip of Greenland) of AA7FV at the time of my spotting him.

Conditions at the time of the spot of 09:00UT.  Note where the path crosses the greyline's start (astronomical twilight).  Image: DX Atlas, with permission.

Even when we consider the 'fuzziness' of what height we are considering in respect of the ionosphere, it's clear that AA7FV was well out of sight of it at the time.  This is more so the case, as there are hills lying very close by in the direction of Europe from AA7FV, reducing the possibility of the lowest propagation angles having an impact:

View from AA7FV's area towards Europe.  Image: Bing Maps.

I haven't spotted AA7FV under quiet geomagnetic conditions, so it's pretty clear that this spot is related to enhanced field activity.  This is the forecast model for the time:

The path from AA7FV to me thus took it well into the auroral zone.  It seems to be that free electrons were probably available in large numbers somewhere at the southern edge of the modelled aurora, such that AA7FV was in sight of them, allowing propagation.  It's still remarkable that the path is going through such apparently disturbed areas, yet still being decoded successfully here; WSPR is not particularly robust under varying propagation. 

SDR Receiving: taking it easy...

I've recently been taking an interest in listening for, rather than tranmsitting WSPR of late.  I find this is a nice way to 'keep the radio fire burning' whilst I get on with other things.  Often, there are fascinating and unusual spots to be heard.

But using my rigs is a little bit like using a hammer to break a nut: power hungry, not a very good use of expensive equipment, and rather heavy to carry around for /P work.

So, having spent a long time looking at various SDR possibilities, I finally settled on the SDRPlay RSP-1A.  At £89, I thought this was a much more sensible balance of cost and performance than going for the Airspy HF+ which, although it gets good reviews, is £229, or roughly half the price of a new Yaesu FT-450 rig.

I managed to get £4.50 knocked off the price at RadioWorld, just by searching online for a discount voucher.

We'll see how this 14-bit receiver does in comparison to rice box rigs at HF; it should arrive tomorrow, if I'm lucky.  Beyond that, I'm quite persuaded by those on WSPRnet who recommend the Red Pitaya.  At 349 Euro, that's quite a good deal.

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.