Thanks Alan - it certainly was a kicker up here -
Last night I had my first decode on 475kHz from WH2XGP since 17th from the "vanished" band - so this shows a slight improvement - very slight.
Its amazing to me that such relatively small changes in latitude have close to a logarithmic effect in losses. Its a different world here at 61N to my friends in Seattle just a 3 hour flight South, but again, and specific to this location - these local and not so local ragged mountain ranges are breaking up skywave reflections too to my detriment, probably for signal coming in below 10 degrees here - and that's not helping at all either. I actually think this lat/geolat is actually worse than than up near the Geo Pole -
Base on our Fiennes expedition comms work Im still of an opinion that LF/MF comms between stations inside the disturbed Auroral oval are typically actually way way better than on the South side of it or in it during a Mag/proton event - and often we sat there pondering - and came to the conclusion it was like being in a one way semi conductor mirror or gold fish bowl with a very low noise level able to hear the world but the world not hearing us across the Oval . During the March 13th 1989 event another North Pole expedition hadn't been able to contact their Spitzbergen base and we were asked to look out for them at Ward Hunt on 2182kHz as part of the SAR - so I put out a few calls and there they were at S7 - them using 5W to a small wire and good earth - signals were so stable with nearly no fade at some 1400Kms in a twilight period and all within this goldfish bowl - I actually had to tell them to reduce power as their batteries were so dead they were FMing..
The other oddity was the excellent North Pole to South Pole HF comms during the latter half of that event - we couldnt talk to Resolute or Eureka down the road, but could swap Met and Sitreps to South Georgia and Rothera bases at huge signals on what appeared chordal hop - what an oddity that was - once the iono recovered a bit we lost this path....
thanks for the input - roll out the "quiet sun" please.
Laurence KL7L
From:
[email protected]To:
[email protected]Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 18:42:00 +0000
Subject: LF: Re: Poor conditions
Hi Laurence and Roelof, Yes that was a big one on
the 17th. I dont remember the Dst being depressed to -230nT for some quite long
time. My thumbnail estimate says that it could take at least 14 days and
possibly up to 21 days to really get back to to good conditions again. The
succession of shocks really loaded up the ring current, and although the Dst has
risen to -35nT its rate of increase has flattened out.
Because the CME "snow-ploughed" it way though a
coronal hole high speed stream the event produced a large multiple proton event
which has died away now, but the PCA effects tend to linger. We are still
gettting shocks (Kp 6 yesterday and Kp=5 today) which may be "sub-storms".
These occur when ions and electrons trapped in the mageto-tail are "spat
back" towards Earth (another glob of plasma is spat in the opposite direction to
conserve momentum) The mechanism is much like he release of energy from the
strained Solar magnetic field that produced the CME. The trapped hot electrons
"wind up" the field in the magneto-tail until it "snaps" into a lower energy
state. The lost energy is carried by the ejected particles.
Alan
G3NYK
