12 Mar 2015

Sunspots and 10m - March 12th 2015

Sunspot number is little changed on yesterday. It is 42 today.  10m propagation is expected again to be "fair" whatever this means.

I turned on my 10m 500mW WSPR beacon a few minutes ago. It usually takes about 20 minutes  for the PA to warm and the box stabilise. I see a few Hertz drift in my very first reports then it is stable all day long.

UPDATE 0950z:  My little beacon is still stabilising, so no reports as yet on 10m WSPR.

UPDATE 1020z:  Almost as I was writing the above, G4CUI (172km) started to spot me on 10m. The unit has now fully stabilised. Reports are at the -24/-25dB S/N level.  This is probably tropo and aircraft reflections. 172km is quite a distance for regular spots by tropo, but certainly possible. It would be interesting to see the screenshots from G4CUI to see if there are multiple Doppler shifted signals, which would suggest aircraft reflection. An absence of Doppler might suggest pure 10m tropo.

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