[NLRS] Tropo season is here

[Doug Reed]

Yes, 144.390 simplex is the national APRS frequency and it is usually
quite busy. Over the weekend, late Saturday through Sunday, it was
very busy. Too bad I completely missed it....

<http://aprs.fi/info/graphs/a/WB0MPE-8>
It must have been busy because there was enough activity to drown out
local reception of beacons from the Bay City WIDE. If you check the
graph you will see it goes from its normal 4-8 beacons per hour and
drops to only one beacon per hour being heard for much of Saturday
night and all day Sunday. I couldn't explain it before but if there
was this big an opening, the extra packet activity would explain it.
If you check the "info" for the station, you will also see that many
of the longest reception reports are from the 13th and 14th, including
two at 380 miles, which is a long way for 2M FM.

<http://aprs.mountainlake.k12.mn.us/>
This is the propagation page that I mentioned last year that uses APRS
data in an attempt to track openings. The page defaults to current
time, I don't know if there is a way to run it back a day or two, but
probably not. At 9AM when I'm writing this, it looks like propagation
is a bit enhanced all over the east coast and possibly building in our
direction as the sun rise higher.... So we may have enhanced
conditions again today.

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.

> On 7/14/2013 7:32 PM, Russ Ramirez wrote:
>> Anyone know what the apparent NFM digital transmission is on 144.390? It
>> is listed as an APRS frequency, so I am assuming that is what it is.
>>
>> Russ
>> K0WFS