{"id":274,"date":"2017-08-29T16:26:18","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T16:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/?p=274"},"modified":"2018-02-20T16:28:09","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T16:28:09","slug":"solar-eclipse-qso-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/solar-eclipse-qso-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar Eclipse QSO Party"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The total solar eclipse that traversed the continental United States on August 21 was a golden opportunity to study the effects of the eclipse on \u00a0ionospheric radio propagation. A rather new organization, the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation<\/a> (HamSCI), sponsored a QSO Party<\/a> on that date to collect data to investigate what happens when the sun goes away for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

From all accounts, the experiment was a success in that it confirmed the expected outcome – nighttime propagation conditions appeared, and then disappeared, in the middle of the day.<\/p>\n

I took the day off from work and participated by setting up a portable station on my backyard deck. While I didn’t operate the full eight hours, I made 71 QSOs during the time prior to and during the peak occlusion, which reached about 85 percent in southern Michigan.<\/p>\n

Probably the most significant effect was the brief time I was on 160 meters right after the peak. I only worked three stations, two of them local, but Jon, AA1K 500 miles away in \u00a0Delaware (FM29) was one I would certainly not be able to work during the daytime.<\/p>\n

I also noticed enhanced propagation on 80 meters, working stations across the east coast as well as one in southern California (DM04), just a few minutes past the peak of totality. Certainly one could not ordinarily work that path during the day from Michigan on 80 meters.<\/p>\n

These two effects on the low bands confirm that D-layer absorption drops quickly when the sun goes away, a phenomenon we frequently observe very late in the day or early in the morning right around the “golden hour” and especially now during a lull in solar output.<\/p>\n

It was an interesting and memorable experiment and experience. Solar eclipses aren’t exactly rare; they happen every year or so in some form, with a total eclipse happening in 2019 in the south Pacific, and another that will cross North America in 2024. I hope to enjoy experimenting with the enhanced propagation that these eclipses produce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The total solar eclipse that traversed the continental United States on August 21 was a golden opportunity to study the effects of the eclipse on \u00a0ionospheric radio propagation. A rather new organization, the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI), sponsored a QSO Party on that date to collect data to investigate what happens when the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Solar Eclipse QSO Party”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contesting","category-general-ham-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nf8m.com\/nf8m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}