[NLRS] Re: [mn-wireless-assn] 160M + 6M

[Dave Aho]

Hmmmmmmmm....sounds like a start of a presentation by
Ford for the NLRS Aurora conference....*L*  How about
it Ford?

               Dave...N9TTX


--- Ford Peterson <ford@cmgate.com> wrote:
> Jon wrote:
> 
> ...SNIP...
> 
> > Hi Ford.   Isnt propagation cool stuff ?   
> 
> No kidding!  I lay in bed at night reading Jasik,
> Feynmann, Terman, ON4UN, Brown, and others.  My
> bedside table is about 1' deep in books 2"-3" thick.
>  My wife just shakes her head.  "Figured it out yet
> Honey?"  ...  Nope!  I can tell the weather by
> reading the clouds, check out the MUFs and read the
> HF bands, even 6M has some logic to it.  But 160M is
> still a puzzle.
> 
> ...SNIP...
> 
> > What I don't understand is the interplay of any
> sporadic E with propagation
> > on 160m .... I don't know if a patch of sporadic E
> ionization would 
> > propagate 1.8 MHz RF or eat it.
> > 
> > 73, Jon
> > W0ZQ
> 
> You are touching on exactly my thoughts as well. 
> I've been led to believe that what starts out as E
> layer ionization later begins to hang down lower to
> form D layer.  That's what we experience here in the
> Northland, living under the umbrella of the D layer.
>  160M just shuts down like you flipped a light
> switch.  And this D layer is hardly smooth.  Bob
> Brown describes it as waves with crests and valleys
> across the sky.
> 
> Ever watch the waves of Aurora?  I have no neighbors
> within 1/2 mile or so.  On a clear Aurora filled
> night, I can flip off the yard light and still read
> the fine print in Terman in the middle of my back
> yard.  It's beautiful.  You can actually observe the
> wave like undulations in the upper layers.  The
> light intensifies in waves as the solar winds excite
> it.  I can only speculate that these wave-like
> structures of ionization hang down even further to
> form D layer.
> 
> While HF refracts (it doesn't reflect) off the F
> layers, MF uses the E layer for refraction.  But the
> D layer causes severe attenuation so signals don't
> pass to the E and back down (passing through the D
> twice, once up and once down).  I can only
> speculate, but there was some strange occurance that
> night where the E layer was heavily ionized and the
> D had not yet saturated, passing the low angle stuff
> from A61.
> 
> I have also experienced 'spotlight' effects on
> numerous occassions on 160M.  I can only speculate,
> but my suspicion is that signals actually pass
> beyond the E and get wedged between E and F and
> bounce back and forth until the signal gets to a
> point where the E passes the signal back down like
> light through a hole in the clouds.  I can locate
> many a log that shows every other station being FL
> for 15-20 minutes and then never hear FL again the
> rest of the night.  A few minutes later, every other
> log entry will be SC, then NC, and finally VA.  Like
> this huge spotlight scanning the east coast.
> 
> I've also got to believe the skewed path phenomena
> is due to these same ducts that form in mysterious
> ways on topband.  I imagine it as wave-like fingers
> of E layer hanging down.  Imagine a vertical wall of
> E layer ionization, hanging down like the fingers of
> Aurora, refracting the signal sideways instead of
> down.  This gives the illusion that the signal is
> coming from a different direction.  It's the only
> explanation of skewed path that makes any sense to
> me.
> 
> Ford-N0FP
> ford@cmgate.com
> 
> 
> 


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