I believe Rick had an exchange in 2008 with Gwyn, G4FKH, about the issue of
using REC533 in Zoneprop. Gwyn is a member of the RSGB propagation committee
and he writes the monthly propagation report for the RADCOM.
If I recall he explained exhaustive work had been done to verify which of
the "freely" available propagation programs was best and REC-533 came out on
top. While the program was designed for mid- to long-term averages it has
been shown to be good in the short-term as well. You might check out some of
the articles on HF Ionospheric Propagation Studies and Predictions on his
web site (http://g4fkh.co.uk/articles/ ) and in particular you may find his
article "The RSGB PSC-International Beacon Monitoring Project" informative
too. It and some of his other articles are available at
http://www.ncdxf.org/beacon/beaconnews.html
Zoneprop was designed by Gwyn. It does not attempt to change the underlying
nature of REC533. Every three hours a new K index is issued by SEC NOAA.
When a K index of 3 or greater is issued, the MUF is adjusted to reflect the
change in the K index. This adjustment may or may not make a difference to
the FOT matrix, it depends upon how close to the band edge the predicted MUF
was in the first place. Gwyn has correlated the MUF change with the
International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) and found excellent correlation.
If you want more information on the design of Zoneprop then please contact
Gwyn at g4fkh@sky.com .... I only handled the programming and maintenance of
Zoneprop. :)
Syl - VE5ZX
http://www.radiosport.ca/zoneprop/
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