Topband: solar wind, auroral oval images, D-region bite-outs

[k9la at frontier.com]

Hi everyone,
 
I would think that there's a high correlation between the polarity of the IMF and the K/A indices, so this polarity may not tell us any more than the K/A indices. There is a topbander on the other side of the Atlantic (darned if I can remember who it is at the moment - as soon as I send this e-mail I'll probably remember) who believes he sees a correlation between his 160-Meter propagation and the speed and dynamic pressure (both are also on the dials at the SWPC's "space weather now" link).
 
As for stratwarms, the winter anomaly has always been measured as a daytime event. That's because the NO spills into the lower latitudes and is easily ionized by solar radiation. But we do our DXing on 160 at night, so it's tough to tie more absorption at night to stratwarms. In contradiction with W4ZV's belief, long ago I took a look at IV3PRK's log to NA under stratwarm and non-stratwarm conditions, and couldn't really come up with anything conclusive. Another one of the mysteries of 160-Meters.
 
And D-region bite-outs also show up in rocket flight data and incoherent scatter radar in the normal ionosphere - away from the higher latitudes where PMSE occurs. I'm sure these bite-outs (a bite-out is a dramatic reduction in D-region electron density over a very narrow altitude range) help reduce absorption, but I suspect they are very fleeting due to the very dynamic nature of the D-region.
 
Carl K9LA