HFU HF Underground
Loggings => HF Beacons => Topic started by: W4JBM on June 15, 2011, 1212 UTC
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I haven't had time to do much listening to HF over the past year. Over the weekend I got the station cleaned out and working. My homebrew active antenna (which was my best performer from LF up to 7 or 8 MHz) is broke and I need to rebuild it. I'm using my multiband vertical which is decent through most of the HF band. But so far, not a single PiFER beacon. Also no Russian Letter beacons which use to be regulars.
Came across this article on sunspot activity:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/14/ice_age/
I've read a couple of things about this, but the graph in this article shows a pretty clear trend. Hope it's wrong because if it's right we might not have any great HF conditions again in my lifetime. Twenty years ago, it was all about the coming ice age. Then it was all about global warming. Now they are talking about a mini-ice age. Hopefully they are wrong (yet again) and propagation will pick up again.
73,
Jim
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We should petition the HAARP people to light up the ionosphere for us SWL'ers ;D
Peace!
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We should petition the HAARP people to light up the ionosphere for us SWL'ers ;D
Peace!
Or, petition Japan/TEPCO to release more radioactive materials ... "ionizing radiation" - that will excite the ionosphere too ...
My thinking is that some of our enhanced propagation was due to prior releases at the Fukushima Daiichi facility.
Open air nuclear testing in the 50's - 60's contributed to enhanced propagation (long term effects; in the short term propagation from a nuclear detonation can degrade propagation) back too, a facet little discussed in most circles.
Various materials released have a variety of half lives, from weeks to months to years to centuries ... as these decay, they too can 'ionize' air molecules in the ionosphere much like solar effects can.
Fukushima Daiichi disaster:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
Effects by High-Altitude Nuclear Tests on HF Communications (The last page briefly mentions "long term effects".)
http://blockyourid.com/~gbpprorg/mil/herf/CQ-Nuclear_Explosions_On_HF_Comms.pdf
Other documented effects by open-air nuclear tests:
http://www.geophysica.fi/pdf/geophysica_1965_9_2_119_oksman.pdf
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The major cause of the excellent propagation during the 50s was Solar Cycle 19 - the largest on record. Meanwhile we seem to be in one of the weaker cycles right now, and some of the forecasts for Cycle 25 don't seem very promising at all.
Compared to the Sun, ionization due to fallout from Fukeshima simply isn't a factor. Plus the fallout is mostly in the lower atmosphere, and gets washed out by rain fairly quickly (which is one reason we're not seeing much of it here in the USA).
High altitude nuclear tests produced very short term effects on the ionosphere, but through an entirely different mechanism.
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We should petition the HAARP people to light up the ionosphere for us SWL'ers ;D
Peace!
With the recent earthquake and hurricane?
It'd be tinfoil-hat overload :D
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George Noory would be swearing it was the coming of the end of the Mayan Calendar,they were just a year out.
Didn't the Soviets have an enrichment plant blow in the Urals around 1954?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster