[HCDX] Auroral Propagation Last Night In Florida

["Thomas Giella KN4LF" <kn4lf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  Propagation was very interesting last night in west central Florida. On
the LF AM broadcast band all of the dependable European stations like France
on 162 kc, etc. were not to be found, night before last same thing. This is
a normal occurrence with an extreme Kp-9 geomagnetic storm. The longwave
stations normally waveguide off of the bottom of the D layer at night but
during a big geomagnetic storm electrons precipitate down to the D layer and
create absorption of LF signals.
  On the MF AM broadcast band my normal night time regional stations from
the north came in at times but then would abruptly disappear in favor of
Central and South American stations. Stations from the north would skew in
from the NE-E instead of the north and Central and South Americans would
skew in from the SW-W instead of from the south. At times it all seemed to
swirl around from every direction of the compass with a Doppler type of
shifting sound, as the E layer varied from refraction to scattering to
absorption. Also a normal occurrence as the radio Aurora is at E layer
height.
  The 90, 75 and 60 meter HF broadcast band stations from Europe and Africa
did not fade in from the east two hours before local sunset here as is
normal. Because of high background x-ray flux levels fade in was a little
"after" local sunset. Also Aurora E layer scattering, back scattering and
Doppler shifting was noted on all HF stations that were able to propagate
in.
  I'm disappointed though that I was not able to see any visible Aurora here
in central Florida this time. Last night the Bz swung way north nixing any
visible Aurora at my magnetic latitude of 38 deg. N. Night before last when
the Bz was -50 clouds got into the way. By the way I think the CME of last
night arrived even faster then the one before. Solar wind was cooking at
1200+ kms!
  To put recent events into perspective we had 60 consecutive hours of
geomagnetic storming in the past 3 days. Also in the past 14 days 7 X class
flares, 45 M class flares and 92 C class flares. Also 3 elevated energetic
proton events and so many CME's that I lost count. We also saw the largest
daily solar flux level of cycle 23 at 318, previous high was 294 in March
2001. The X17+ solar flare was the second largest of this solar cycle and
third largest ever, the X11+ the third largest of this solar cycle.


73,
Thomas F. Giella, KN4LF
Plant City, FL, USA
EL87WX

Yaesu FT-840 Digital Modes E-List:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yaesu_ft840

KN4LF 160 Meter Amateur Radio Resources & More:
http://www.kn4lf.com/kn4lf.htm

KN4LF Daily Solar Space Weather & Geomagnetic Data Archive
Plus Daily HF.MF Radio Propagation Outlook:
http://www.kn4lf.com/kn4lf5.htm

Florida Space & Atmospheric Weather Institute:
http://www.kn4lf.com/fsawi.htm




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