Propagation was very interesting last night in west central Florida. On the LF AM broadcast band all of the dependable European stations like France on 162 kc, etc. were not to be found, night before last same thing. This is a normal occurrence with an extreme Kp-9 geomagnetic storm. The longwave stations normally waveguide off of the bottom of the D layer at night but during a big geomagnetic storm electrons precipitate down to the D layer and create absorption of LF signals. On the MF AM broadcast band my normal night time regional stations from the north came in at times but then would abruptly disappear in favor of Central and South American stations. Stations from the north would skew in from the NE-E instead of the north and Central and South Americans would skew in from the SW-W instead of from the south. At times it all seemed to swirl around from every direction of the compass with a Doppler type of shifting sound, as the E layer varied from refraction to scattering to absorption. Also a normal occurrence as the radio Aurora is at E layer height. The 90, 75 and 60 meter HF broadcast band stations from Europe and Africa did not fade in from the east two hours before local sunset here as is normal. Because of high background x-ray flux levels fade in was a little "after" local sunset. Also Aurora E layer scattering, back scattering and Doppler shifting was noted on all HF stations that were able to propagate in. I'm disappointed though that I was not able to see any visible Aurora here in central Florida this time. Last night the Bz swung way north nixing any visible Aurora at my magnetic latitude of 38 deg. N. Night before last when the Bz was -50 clouds got into the way. By the way I think the CME of last night arrived even faster then the one before. Solar wind was cooking at 1200+ kms! To put recent events into perspective we had 60 consecutive hours of geomagnetic storming in the past 3 days. Also in the past 14 days 7 X class flares, 45 M class flares and 92 C class flares. Also 3 elevated energetic proton events and so many CME's that I lost count. We also saw the largest daily solar flux level of cycle 23 at 318, previous high was 294 in March 2001. The X17+ solar flare was the second largest of this solar cycle and third largest ever, the X11+ the third largest of this solar cycle.
73, Thomas F. Giella, KN4LF Plant City, FL, USA EL87WX Yaesu FT-840 Digital Modes E-List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yaesu_ft840 KN4LF 160 Meter Amateur Radio Resources & More: http://www.kn4lf.com/kn4lf.htm KN4LF Daily Solar Space Weather & Geomagnetic Data Archive Plus Daily HF.MF Radio Propagation Outlook: http://www.kn4lf.com/kn4lf5.htm Florida Space & Atmospheric Weather Institute: http://www.kn4lf.com/fsawi.htm --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free Thanks To Grisoft AVG. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.532 / Virus Database: 326 - Release Date: 10/27/2003 ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- World Radio TV Handbook 2004 is coming out! Preorder yours now! Only $20.97 through us. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823059685/hardcoredxcom ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt