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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jock Elliott, who shares the following guest post:
You and the ionosphere . . . a reader participation post
By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM
Here’s a shocker for you: we live at the bottom of the sky. Above us there are multiple layers of the atmosphere, pressing down on us at 14.7 pounds per square inch.
Of particular relevance to us as shortwave listeners and hams, there is a special layer of the atmosphere, not shown on the chart above called the ionosphere. The ionosphere starts around 30 miles above us and extends up to about 600 miles and includes parts of the layers above.
The Sun’s upper atmosphere, the corona, is very hot and produces a constant stream of Ultra-Violet and X-rays, some of which reach our atmosphere. When the high energy UV and X-rays strike the atmosphere, electrons are knocked loose from their parent atoms and molecules, creating a layer of electrons.
Now, here’s the cool part: this layer – the ionosphere – is important because radio waves bounce off of it.
The sun, however, is not constant in its action on the ionosphere. The amount of UV and x-ray energy (photon flux) produced by the sun varies at by nearly a factor of ten as the sun goes through an 11 year cycle. The density of the ionosphere changes accordingly, and so does the ability of the ionosphere to bounce radio waves. When the sun is at peak activity, and the ionosphere is “hot,” SWLs and hams are likely to experience excellent long-range propagation. When the sun is quieter, long-range propagation diminishes.
The results can be spectacular. Decades ago, during a particularly hot solar cycle, I once spoke from my station near Albany, NY, to a station in the state of Georgia on a mere 4 watts. On another occasion, I conversed with a ham in Christchurch, New Zealand – a distance of over 9,000 miles – with 100 watts single sideband transmit power. During that same period, I would routinely listen to shortwave stations halfway around the world.
And now, it’s your turn – what’s your favorite long-range propagation story, either as an SWL or ham? Please comment!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Tracy Wood, who shares the following journal abstract from EurekaAlert.com:
Commencement of shortwave propagation simulator (HF-START) service
Demonstrating radio wave propagation paths between any two points based on real-time space weather information
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY (NICT)
[Abstract]
The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.), in collaboration with Electronic Navigation Research Institute, National Institute of Maritime, Port and Aviation Technology (ENRI, Director General: FUKUDA Yutaka) and Chiba University (President: TOKUHISA Takeshi), has started the service of shortwave propagation simulator (HF-START). It provides real-time shortwave propagation that reflects real space weather information from ground-based observations and model calculations. The HF-START web system has been successfully developed and is now available at https://hfstart.nict.go.jp/.
The web calculation function of this system allows shortwave propagation between any two points in Japan based on real-time GNSS observations and between any two points on the Earth based on model-based space weather information. Real-time estimation is possible. The calculation in the past and up to about 1 day ahead in the future is also possible. In addition to amateur radio, HF-START is expected to benefit efficient frequency operation of aviation communications that relies on shortwave in the polar route.
[Background]
Communication and positioning technologies play an important role in social infrastructure in various fields today. The ionosphere has regular temporal cycles and fluctuates greatly every day associated with solar activity and space environment. Of benefit to us is the fact that ionosphere is good at refracting shortwave, which is why we can hop shortwave signals off the ionosphere to communicate with people over large distances.
Shortwave band has been used for communication and broadcasting for a long time, and are still widely used in radio broadcasting, aviation communication, amateur radio, etc. Ionospheric variation, however, has a great influence on the propagation of radio waves. Communication environment such as the communication range and usable frequency changes significantly due to the influence of the ionospheric fluctuation. Thus, fluctuations in the ionosphere affect the operation of shortwave broadcasting, aviation communications, and amateur radio.
There have been websites that provide estimated information on how radio wave propagation changes due to such ionospheric fluctuations. The problem is that it is based on a simple model and does not reflect realistic ionospheric fluctuations.
[Achievements]
We have developed a shortwave propagation simulator HF-START that estimates and provides shortwave propagation information in real-time under realistic ionospheric fluctuations based on ground-based observations and model calculations. We open real-time information estimated by HF-START, and the web application at https://hfstart.nict.go.jp/.
Figure 1 shows an example of visualization of shortwave propagation by HF-START. In this system, the user can check the radio wave propagation information that is updated in real-time. As shown in Figure 2, the user can also use the web application to estimate and visualize radio wave propagation by specifying any frequency in the range of 3-30 MHz, any two points on the Earth, and any transmission angle. The date and time can be set retroactively to the past (after 2016), to the real-time, and in the future (up to about 1 day ahead).
The system can be used to visualize the radio propagation path and clarify whether it is affected by space weather when the shortwave you are using does not reach the destination, or when you can listen shortwave broadcasted from the far source that normally you cannot hear. Furthermore, in addition to amateur radio, it is expected to benefit efficient frequency operation of the aircrafts that use shortwave in polar route.
[Future Prospects]
We are conducting research and development to extend the HF-START to estimate radio wave propagation not only in the shortwave band but also in other frequency bands. In addition, we will evaluate the simulator accuracy and improve it by comparing it with radio wave propagation observations.
NICT has been providing information related to communications, satellite positioning, and radiation exposure since November 2019 as a member of the Global Space Weather Center of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). With the HF-START service, we expect to improve the information provided to directly relate to communications, such as communication range information.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Gregory Ivanov, who writes:
Hi, found this video–I think it’s pretty cool. Shows some impressive 3D propagation simulation, I haven’t seen before:
Wow! That is fascinating. Thank you for sharing this, Gregory. 3D tools like this could be invaluable for predicting propagation even for hams and SWLs.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, 13dka, who shares the following guest post:
Gone fishing…for DX: Reception enhancement at the seaside
by 13dka
In each of my few reviews I referred to “the dike” or “my happy place”, which is a tiny stretch of the 380 miles of dike protecting Germany’s North Sea coast. This is the place where I like to go for maximum listening pleasure and of course for testing radios. Everyone knows that close proximity to an ocean is good for radio reception…but why is that? Is there a way to quantify “good”?
Of course there is, this has been documented before, there is probably lots of literature about it and old papers like this one (click here to download PDF). A complete answer to the question has at least two parts:
1. Less QRM
It may be obvious, but civilization and therefore QRM sources at such a place extend to one hemisphere only, because the other one is covered with ocean for 100s, if not 1000s of miles. There are few places on the planet that offer such a lack of civilization in such a big area, while still being accessible, habitable and in range for pizza delivery. Unless you’re in the midst of a noisy tourist trap town, QRM will be low. Still, you may have to find a good spot away from all tourist attractions and industry for absolutely minimal QRM.
My dike listening post is far enough from the next small tourist trap town (in which I live) and also sufficiently far away from the few houses of the next tiny village and it’s located in an area that doesn’t have HV power lines (important for MW and LW reception!) or industrial areas, other small villages are miles away and miles apart, the next town is 20 km/12 miles away from there. In other words, man-made noise is just not an issue there.
That alone would be making shortwave reception as good as it gets and it gives me an opportunity to check out radios on my own terms: The only way to assess a radio’s properties and qualities without or beyond test equipment is under ideal conditions, particularly for everything that has to do with sensitivity. It’s already difficult without QRM (because natural noise (QRN) can easily be higher than the receiver’s sensitivity threshold too, depending on a number of factors), and even small amounts of QRM on top make that assessment increasingly impossible. This is particularly true for portables, which often can’t be fully isolated from local noise sources for a couple of reasons.
Yes, most modern radios are all very sensitive and equal to the degree that it doesn’t make a difference in 98% of all regular reception scenarios but my experience at the dike is that there are still differences, and the difference between my least sensitive and my most sensitive portable is not at all negligible, even more because they are not only receivers but the entire receiving system including the antenna. You won’t notice that difference in the middle of a city, but you may notice it in the woods.
When the radio gets boring, I can still have fun with the swing and the slide!
2. More signal
I always had a feeling that signals actually increase at the dike and that made me curious enough to actually test this by having a receiver tuned to some station in the car, then driving away from the dike and back. Until recently it didn’t come to me to document or even quantify this difference though. When I was once again googling for simple answers to the question what the reason might be, I stumbled upon this video: Callum (M0MCX) demonstrating the true reason for this in MMANA (an antenna modeling software) on his “DX Commander” channel:
To summarize this, Callum explains how a pretty dramatic difference in ground conductivity near the sea (click here to download PDF) leads to an increase in antenna gain, or more precisely a decrease in ground return losses equaling more antenna gain. Of course I assumed that the salt water has something to do with but I had no idea how much: For example, average ground has a conductivity of 0.005 Siemens per meter, salt water is averaging at 5.0 S/m, that’s a factor of 1,000 (!) and that leads to roughly 10dB of gain. That’s right, whatever antenna you use at home in the backcountry would get a free 10dB gain increase by the sea, antennas with actual dBd or dBi gain have even more gain there.
That this has a nice impact on your transmitting signal should be obvious if you’re a ham, if not just imagine that you’d need a 10x more powerful amplifier or an array of wires or verticals or a full-size Yagi to get that kind of gain by directionality. But this is also great for reception: You may argue that 10dB is “only” little more than 1.5 S-units but 1.5 S-units at the bottom of the meter scale spans the entire range between “can’t hear a thing” and “fully copy”!
A practical test
It’s not that I don’t believe DX Commander’s assessment there but I just had to see it myself and find a way to share that with you. A difficulty was finding a station that has A) a stable signal but is B) not really local, C) on shortwave, D) always on air and E) propagation must be across water or at least along the shoreline.
The army (or navy) to the rescue! After several days of observing STANAG stations for their variation in signal on different times of the day, I picked one on 4083 kHz (thanks to whoever pays taxes to keep that thing blasting the band day and night!). I don’t know where exactly (my KiwiSDR-assisted guess is the English channel region) that station is, but it’s always in the same narrow range of levels around S9 here at home, there’s usually the same little QSB on the signal, and the signals are the same day or night.
On top of that, I had a look at geological maps of my part of the country to find out how far I should drive into the backcountry to find conditions that are really different from the coast. Where I live, former sea ground and marsh land is forming a pretty wide strip of moist, fertile soil with above average conductivity, but approximately 20km/12mi to the east the ground changes to a composition typical for the terminal moraine inland formed in the ice age. So I picked a quiet place 25km east of my QTH to measure the level of that STANAG station and also to record the BBC on 198 kHz. Some source stated that the coastal enhancement effect can be observed within 10 lambda distance to the shoreline, that would be 730m for the 4 MHz STANAG station and 15km for the BBC, so 25km should suffice to rule out any residue enhancement from the seaside.
My car stereo has no S-meter (or a proper antenna, so reception is needlessly bad but this is good in this case) so all you get is the difference in audio. The car had the same orientation (nose pointing to the east) at both places. For the 4 MHz signal though (coincidence or not), the meter shows ~10dBm (or dBµV/EMF) more signal at the dike.
3. Effect on SNR
Remember, more signal alone does not equal better reception, what we’re looking for is a better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Now that we’ve established that the man-made noise should be as low as possible at “my” dike, the remaining question is: Does this signal enhancement have an effect on SNR as well? Even if there is virtually no local QRM at my “happy place” – there is still natural noise (QRN) and that wouldn’t that likely gain 10dB too?
Here are some hypotheses that may be subject of debate and some calculations way over my head (physics/math fans, please comment and help someone out who always got an F in math!). Sorry for all the gross oversimplifications:
Extremely lossy antennas
We know that pure reception antennas are often a bit different in that the general reciprocity rule has comparatively little meaning, many antennas designed for optimizing reception in specific situations would be terrible transmitting antennas. One quite extreme example, not meant to optimize anything but portability is the telescopic whip on shortwaves >10m. At the dike, those gain more signal too. When the QRN drops after sunset on higher frequencies, the extremely lossy whip might be an exception because the signal coming out of it is so small that it’s much closer to the receiver noise, so this friendly signal boost could lift very faint signals above the receiver noise more than the QRN, which in turn could mean a little increase in SNR, and as we know even a little increase in SNR can go a long way.
The BBC Radio 4 longwave recording is likely another example for this – the unusually weak signal is coming from a small and badly matched rubber antenna with abysmal performance on all frequency ranges including LW. The SNR is obviously increasing at the dike because the signal gets lifted more above the base noise of the receiving system, while the atmospheric noise component is likely still far below that threshold. Many deliberately lossy antenna design, such as flag/tennant, passive small aperture loops (like e.g. the YouLoop) or loop-on-ground antennas may benefit most from losses decreasing by 10dB.
Not so lossy antennas, polarization and elevation patterns
However, there is still more than a signal strength difference between “big” antennas and the whips at the dike: Not only at the sea, directionality will have an impact on QRN levels, a bidirectional antenna may already decrease QRN and hence increase SNR further, an unidirectional antenna even more, that’s one reason why proper Beverage antennas for example work wonders particularly on noisy low frequencies at night (but this is actually a bad example because Beverage antennas are said to work best on lossy ground).
Also, directional or not, the “ideal” ground will likely change the radiation pattern, namely the elevation angles, putting the “focus” of the antenna from near to far – or vice versa: As far as my research went, antennas with horizontal polarization are not ideal in this regard as they benefit much less from the “mirror effect” and a relatively low antenna height may be more disadvantageous for DX (but maybe good for NVIS/local ragchewing) than usual. Well, that explains why I never got particularly good results with horizontal dipoles at the dike!
Using a loop-on-ground antenna at a place without QRM may sound ridiculously out of place at first, but they are bidirectional and vertically polarized antennas, so the high ground conductivity theoretically flattens the take-off angle of the lobes, on top of that they are ~10dB less lossy at the dike, making even a LoG act more like something you’d string up as high as possible elsewhere. They are incredibly convenient, particularly on beaches where natural antenna supports may be non-existent and I found them working extremely well at the dike, now I think I know why. In particular the preamplified version I tried proved to be good enough to receive 4 continents on 20m and a 5th one on 40m – over the course of 4 hours on an evening when conditions were at best slightly above average. Though the really important point is that it increased the SNR further, despite the QRN still showing up on the little Belka’s meter when I connected the whip for comparison (alas not shown in the video).
The 5th continent is missing in this video because the signals from South Africa were not great anymore that late in the evening, but a recording exists.
Here’s a video I shot last year, comparing the same LoG with the whip on my Tecsun S-8800 on 25m (Radio Marti 11930 kHz):
At the same time, I recorded the station with the next decent KiwiSDR in my area:
Of course, these directionality vs noise mechanisms are basically the same on any soil. But compensating ground losses and getting flat elevation patterns may require great efforts, like extensive radial systems, buried meshes etc. and it’s pretty hard to cover enough area around the antenna (minimum 1/2 wavelength, ideally more!) to get optimum results on disadvantaged soils, while still never reaching the beach conditions. You may have to invest a lot of labor and/or money to overcome such geological hardships, while the beach gives you all that for free.
But there may be yet another contributing factor: The gain pattern is likely not symmetrical – signals (and QRN) coming from the land side will likely not benefit the same way from the enhancement, which tapers off quickly (10 wavelengths) on the land side of the dike and regular “cross-country” conditions take place in that direction, while salt water stretching far beyond the horizon is enhancing reception to the other side.
So my preliminary answer to that question would be: “Yes, under circumstances the shoreline signal increase and ground properties can improve SNR further, that improvement can be harvested easily with vertically polarized antennas”.
Would it be worthwhile driving 1000 miles to the next ocean beach… for SWLing?
Maybe not every week–? Seriously, it depends.
Sure, an ocean shoreline will generally help turning up the very best your radios and antennas can deliver, I think the only way to top this would be adding a sensible amount of elevation, a.k.a. cliff coasts.
If you’re interested in extreme DX or just in the technical performance aspect, if you want to experience what your stuff is capable of or if you don’t want to put a lot of effort into setting up antennas, you should definitely find a quiet place at the ocean, particularly if your options to get maximum performance are rather limited (space constraints, QRM, HOA restrictions, you name it) at home.
If you’re a BCL/program listener and more interested in the “content” than the way it came to you, if you’re generally happy with reception of your favorite programs or if you simply have some very well working setup at home, there’s likely not much the beach could offer you in terms of radio. But the seaside has much more to offer than fatter shortwaves of course.
From left to right: Starry sky capture with cellphone cam, nocticlucent clouds behind the dike, car with hot coffee inside and a shortwave portable suction-cupped to the side window – nights at the dike are usually cold but sometimes just beautiful. (Click to enlarge.)
However, getting away from the QRM means everything for a better SNR and best reception. In other words, if the next ocean is really a hassle to reach, it may be a better idea to just find a very quiet place nearby and maybe putting up some more substantial antenna than driving 1000 miles. But if you happen to plan on some seaside vacation, make absolutely sure you bring two radios (because it may break your heart if your only radio fails)!
When we listen to songs on the radio, the sound travels via radio waves that are given out by a transmitter and then received by a receiver — in the case of a car, the car’s antenna is the receiver.
Radio waves travel in the form of electromagnetic radiation from one antenna to the other. The journey, however, isn’t always perfect.
Sometimes, there is a sudden spike in the amount of hot gas in the upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere which causes interference in radio communications. If you are tuned into a favorite station, that could result in static, or for one radio station to be replaced by another.
This phenomenon, known as sporadic E layer, is difficult to study on Earth because that part of the planet’s atmosphere is hard to reach with satellites. As a result, scientists can’t predict when they will occur — leaving us to fiddle with dials.
But thanks to MAVEN, a spacecraft traveling 300 million miles away from our planet, we could finally have the solution.
MAVEN detected sporadic E layer in Mars’ upper atmosphere, and scientists are hoping to be able to use the Red Planet as an off-Earth laboratory to study the phenomenon up close. Already, the data have provided new insights into the cause of radio static, which also affects communications with aircrafts and military radars.[…]
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Evans, who notes:
Users of these two propagation prediction programs will find that they don’t work beyond Dec 2019 because the SSN look-up files didn’t go any further.
I noticed this 2-3 years ago and added to the end of the files required. I entered guesses for solar activity values, but with auto mode turned on they will fetch current values. At least this will get you started again. Or my guesses might be right!! 🙂
The ARRL reports earthquakes in California disrupted HF propagation on the west coast
British Columbia radio amateur Alex Schwarz, VE7DXW, said that an Independence Day magnitude 6.4 earthquake in California’s Mojave Desert and multiple aftershocks negatively affected HF propagation on the US west coast.
Schwarz, who maintains the “RF Seismograph” and has drawn a correlation between earthquake activity and HF band conditions, said the radio disruption began at around 1600 UTC on July 4, and continued into July 5. He said that on July 4, the blackout was total except for 20 meters, where conditions were “severely attenuated,” Schwarz said. The RF Seismograph also detected the magnitude 7.1 earthquake on July 6 in the same vicinity, Schwarz reported. The distance between the monitoring station in Vancouver, British Columbia, and that quake’s epicenter is 1,240 miles.
“Things are back to normal after the strong quake, as far as the ionosphere is concerned, but the unrest has not stopped yet,” Schwarz told ARRL on July 8.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jock Elliott, who shares the following guest post:
