Hi Mike, I think it is the old situation of "hot" electrons precipitated
into the D-layer by geomagnetic activity. It is surprising, and shows why
you cant take any one indicator as a sign of current conditions. We had a
quiet spell in late Dec and early Jan then a short period of Kp of 4, and
the night-time conditions "lit-up" with some very strong T/A paths. About
the last week in Jan we had a rise of Kp to 5, which killed the good T/A
conditions within a few days. Since then a continuous sequence of K=4
(unsettled conditions in NOAA SEC-speak) seem to have kept the ionisation
level up in the D-layer. Night time conditions have been poor, despite
several crossings which needed 60sec dot mode. Brians daytime plots for the
last week in between his night-time T/A activity have shown DCF levels up to
10dB up at mid-day in Porto. I have no current plots as he has lost patience
with the poor service from his ADSL supplier and is remounting his site with
another ISP. However the last plot I have (which is still in the Propagation
report on my web site) showing daytime levels just before the weekend were
still 6dB above my "benchmark average" for "normal" daytime paths. The flare
and X-ray flux over the last moths has been low. This is as low as I have
seen it whilst trying to understand LF propagation. The background was down
to B1 last week, with very little flare activity. The biggest flare seen
recently was a C2-Class. This actually caused a dip in propagation in the
mid morning.
It should be noted that although I believe I was seeing continental stations
at greater strength than normal, there is no doubt that the existance of Ed
this weekend seemed to bring out a lot more activity. I did see some more
stations I am sure because the good weather here meant that there was
nowhere near as much TV interference, drifting across the screen. I ran the
web waterfall for a few hours each morning this weekend, mainly as it had a
"plug" in Jeremy Boot's page of Radcom this month and I thought there might
be some new to LF who would acess it to see what activity was like.
Generally there has been little interest in it so I do not run it
continually....I have a dial-up line still. If anyone specifically wants to
test using it please contact me by e-mail. I am at home most times, and it
seems fairly robust now so it can be left running....ARGO can be uploaded
alternatively to Spectran, if anyone wants to try QRP QRSS. Screen refresh
is about 3 mins at present. It is not worth doing more often as a 130kB
Spectran JPG takes over a minute to load at 50kbs (100secs in congested
times).
the direct page is http://www.alan.melia.btinternet.co.uk/periodic.htm
for your bookmarks.
Slightly better signals may also have due to the reinstallation of my longer
(60m top) Marconi. Next tuesday is a majik "1st Tuesday" so does that mean
there will be some 73k activity ?? If so I will run the waterfall (that is
If I dont manage to get the wire loaded for TX by then!!)
Thanks all for an interesting weekend....I hope we can have more like that!!
Cheers de Alan G3NYK
[email protected]
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