TopBand: Zone 3 Party

[Robert Kavanagh]

From: Bob, VE3OSZ, Ottawa

I too listened this morning (Oct 6, UTC) in awe as the west coast and
European stations had a party ! The Europeans were very weak here, the
best signals being from DF2PY, G4DBN, SM4CAN and LA9GX. But none of
them were up to more normal levels. The other interesting feature was the
very strong west coast signals here: W7GG, N7UA, N6TR/7, VE7FPT, VE7WJ
were all very loud - much louder than one would normally expect. I tried a
few calls to the Europeans but soon realized that it was futile and that
this was a night for listening.

The great circle path from, say, Helsinki to Seattle runs across northern
reenland and fairly close to the North magnetic pole. The path to, say,
Ottawa runs across the southern tip of Greenland and Labrador, quite a
difference. One presumes that there was a nice patch of ionization
somewhere along that northerly path which enabled this propagation between
zone 3 and Europe as well as the good propagation from the west coast to
Ottawa. But, this is a simplistic explanation. Does anybody have a more
sophisticated explanation for what happened this morning ?

Bob, VE3OSZ, Ottawa

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