Re: LF: First MF TA since a longer time

[Markus Vester <markusvester@aol.com>]

Hi John, many thanks to you guys for receiving and reporting! After nil TA during the night before, I was pleasantly surprised to find the distant decodes from Stefan and myself this morning.

 

Apart from spatial variations and the uncertainties due to variable local noise,  there was a clear overall  pattern common to all participating stations - excellent on Thursday night, mediocre on Friday, a bit better again on Saturday. I'm wondering whether that was mostly due to systematic variations of ionospheric attenuation, or QRN levels from stateside storm fronts?

 

BTW Stefan and I have recently looked in some detail at the daytime MF noise background, both in Stefan's garden and here in suburban Nuernberg. Unexpectedly, the noise-equivalent fieldstrength seems to be higher on 475 kHz than on 137 kHz, and perhaps an order of magnitude higher than what was mentioned for semi-rural areas in older literature. We suspect that a predominant part of the noise may actually be due to a large number of ADSL connections, radiating by common mode currents on slightly unbalanced underground telephone lines.

 

Best 73,

Markus (DF6NM) 

-----Ursprüngliche Mitteilung----- 
Von: John Andrews <w1tag@charter.net>
An: rsgb_lf_group <rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org>
Verschickt: So, 27 Sept 2015 4:48 pm
Betreff: Re: LF: First MF TA since a longer time

After one quiet night, the MF TA activity increased last night. Dave,  

AA1A (WD2XSH/17) had 4 spots on DK7FC from 0124 to 0234Z, and 3 spots on  

DF6NM from 0234 to 0314Z. I (W1TAG/1) had 3 spots on DK7FC from 0204 to  

0234Z, and 2 spots on DF6NM from 0254-0314Z. Jay, W1VD (WE2XGR) had no  

TA spots, but good results to the west. 

 

For Alan's head-scratching, Dave lives right on the Massachusetts coast,  

about 200 km south of me. His path to EU does not have the overland  

component that I do in southern (inland) Maine. Jay is 330 km southwest  

of me, and has a considerable overland path to EU. We all live in an  

area with very poor ground conductivity. The path to John, WG2XKA in  

Vermont, who is 200 km west of me, is also more difficult. 

 

Anyway, for the moment the best propagation appears to be in the  

0200-0300Z range, so if you have shut down and gone to bed by that  

point, you may miss out. All of this could change in a day, however! 

 

John, W1TAG/1