20 Apr 2010

Volcanic ash and propagation

My son, his wife and 1 year old son are currently stuck in Los Angeles: all came down with a virus and were unable to travel back to the UK after a 2 week holiday. Not that they could have flown anyway, because all the planes were cancelled as a result of the Icelandic volanic ash. They are now stuck there until May 1st, the next available flight, and that is assuming the volcanic ash is not an issue then.

An upside of the flight ban are the beautifully clear blue skies in the UK completely devoid of vapour trails for days now. Not sure what effect, if any, this has on VHF/UHF tropo or even sporadic-E conditions.

1 comment:

G8JGO said...

I had thoughts about this too. Not being equipped to experiment anyway, but I did wonder about microwave scattering, but then I heard that the particles were not being reflected by airborne radar. Lidar, was able to detect the layer. What I found interesting was the fact that the particles had a silica composition.