[CQ-Contest] contests and participation on air

[VE5ZX]

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 at sky.com .... I only handled the programming and maintenance of 
Zoneprop. :)

Syl - VE5ZX
http://www.radiosport.ca/zoneprop/