Topband: HFTA, Radio Arcala, general comments

[k9la at frontier.com]

My comments follow on three topics that have been brought up,
 
HFTA - It can import the elevation angle files generated from IONCAP/VOACAP that Dean N6BV produced. HFTA does not have an ionospheric module in it. And yes, the files only go down to 80m because of IONCAP/VOACAP limitations.
 
Radio Arcala - I have always believed that a horizontal antenna on 160m at very high latitudes would generally be worse (note that I didn't say always) than a vertical due to the effect of the Earth's magnetic field. How "theory" translates to "the real world" is always subject to careful consideration, but I've seen enough data in the technical literature to stand by my belief.
 
Propagation on 160m - This is a very difficult topic. Most of what makes 160m go is down at D region and E region altitudes, and it is very tough to gather data on these regions at night. What data we have is mostly from rocket flights and scatter radar - which gives us a model that probably doesn't capture all the variability. And I don't think we know all the mechanisms yet that give us good propagation versus bad propagation.
 
Carl K9LA.