Propagation and Monitoring Report

 

Sadly, solar activity has dropped to an astonishingly low level, and the
latest report (Aug 31 2010) from  the IPS in Sydney advised that the 10.7cm
solar flux had fallen to 75 and the Equivalent Smoothed Sunspot Number had
dropped to a miserable 13.

So with that sort of scenario, long distance multi-hop propagation over
darkness or semi-darkness paths above about 12 MHz will be very unreliable,
but daytime long-distance multi-hop propagation will be satisfactory up to
22 MHz.

Here in Melbourne town, afternoon signals on the 13 MHz band have been quite
good in the window 0500 to 0530, with longpath (darkness) mode dominating
from Europe, Middle East Africa, and shortpath (daytime mode) from Asia and
the Americas.

This is what the band looked like on August 31, 2010, from one of my
favourite field monitoring sites in the Warrandyte State Park, 25 km east of
central Melbourne, in the historical goldmining precinct at Pigtail Reef, on
Fifth Hill.

I used the Eton E5 and a 3 m random antenna.

13600 Madagascar - R. Dabanga, Talata, Arabic
13610 China - CNR1 Mandarin
13630 Australia - RA, Shepparton English
13660 Cyprus - BBC, Limassol Arabic
13680 France - RFI, Issoudin French
13690 Australia - RA, Shepparton English
13710 Iran - VOIRI Azeri
13720 Abu Dhabi - Sudan BS, Dhabbaya Arabic
13730 ABU Dhabi - R. Dabanga, Dhabbaya Arabic to 0530*
13740 Iran - VOIRI Dari
13750 Iran - VOIRI Russian
13760 Marianas - RFA, Saipan Mandarin
13765 Madagascar - Vatican Radio via Talata, English to 0530*
13775 Russia - VOR, Vladivostok English
13780 Rwanda - DW, Kigali, Russian
13810 Germany - R. Farda, Lampertheim, Farsi
13820 Cyprus - BBC, Limassol Russian
13860 Sri Lanka - R. Farda, Iranawela, Farsi

Good monitoring of the 13 MHz band!