[Lowfer] WEOH signal plots

[John Davis]

>A radio signal lives a complex life huh???


That's a good way to put it.

It's a most interesting experiment you and Lyle are conducting.  One
consistent feature of the traces stands out rather well so far, and that is
that the N-S receive loop and the vertical receive antenna both go up in
level and come down in level together with much greater time correlation
than either of them relative to the E-W receive loop.  This is pretty much
to be expected.  But the most interesting things to me are that the N-W loop
consistently shows wider variations between the maximum and minimum levels
than the vertical, and greater fluctuations *during* maxima and minima than
the vertical.

It suggests that with the loop, the horizontally polarized component of the
received signal interacts with the vertically polarized component, which I
suppose is also to be expected.  One might therefore predict that there will
be less variation between the N-S loop and the vertical during the daytime,
because the polarization shifts and tilts arising from ionospheric
reflection won't be as prominent in daylight.  (Maybe, anyway.  At higher
latitudes in winter, skywave doesn't entirely vanish.  Single-hop may be
fairly prominent.)

Now, even if skywave is not a significant factor tomorrow, the surface wave
will acquire tilt in transit too, resulting in some slight horizontal
component at the receive loop.  But if skywave is not an appreciable factor,
one might still expect the variations between N-S loop and vertical to be
less than the nighttime case, because that degree of tilt will be relatively
constant.

What I really wish we could see, though, is a comparison with loop and
vertical being used simultaneously at BOTH ends of the path, on closely
adjacent frequencies.  That would be most instructive to watch.

John D