Topband: Poor Propagation or Noise?

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

Hi Roger,

If you go to

  https://www.blitzortung.org/en/live_lightning_maps.php?map=30

and have a look at the lightning situation here, it will give you an idea
what the omni antennas for RBN nodes are putting up against. Also what
stations without directional listening antennas are putting up with.

So far since summer 2021, in the eastern US, there has been no pause in
lightning QRN for winter. I remember when a teen that the QRN vanished in
the fall and did not reappear until spring. Winter was
noise-quiet, other than LORAN on 160. No more.

We are at the point of lightning, tornados, and high levels of QRN
year-round.

Blitzortung shows you what is going on lightning-wise around here. This
winter's speciality is lightning hundred or two hundred miles off the
coast, over the Gulf Stream, where one of these now frequent high velocity
cold fronts tries to bully out that rising Gulf Stream air. Once we are in
darkness, that stuff might as well be in our backyard. The noise follows
the sunset as it wanders west.

73, Guy K2AV

On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 6:26 PM Roger Kennedy <roger at wessexproductions.co.uk>
wrote:

>
> I noticed that signals received from EU over last weekend by most of the US
> RBN sites were around 10 to 20dB lower than normal . . .
>
> Given that they show S/N (rather than absolute signal strengths), is that
> because 160m Propagation was poor . . . or because you had high noise
> levels
> (QRN) over there?
>
> Roger G3YRO
>
>
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