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
