[Lowfer] Dead of the night signal enhancement

[Alan Melia]

Hi Dick this depends where you are located with respect to the transmitter.
I dont know if say your MW BC stations reduced power at night, but if you
were able to measure a true ground-wave only, you would probably find the
enhancement is 6db or thereabouts. It is probably due to the in-phase
addition of ground and skywave path signals. At long distances on LF my
result here show quite often exactly the opposite with a dip at say 0300z
and best signal jest after dusk and just before dawn. At the distance you
are receiving there is probably only the one-hop skywave path and this may
not even be present in daytime. The best time to estimate the gound-wave
strength is during dawn period when the skywave is wiped out by the increase
on solar radiation. The signals strength usually dips at dawn and dusk, but
again this depends on your location wrt the transmitter.

However due to the phases it could be that some will get a peak at dawn.
This indicates that the skywave is out of phase and is generally reducing
the daytime signal strength.
Great Fun. Enjoy you logging. Several or my Radio Astro friends used Radio
Sky Pipe for logging VLF stations to detect solar flares. But the sun has
been so quite this year, they are getting a bit bored :-))

Best wishes
Alan G3NYK