A few things about you and the ionosphere - Let’s talk about the long-distance signal transmission experience that made you excited over the years.

Here's what will surprise you: We live at the bottom of the sky. There are layers of atmosphere above us, weighing down on us at 14.7 pounds per square inch.

For those of us shortwave listeners and radio amateurs, there is a special layer of the atmosphere not shown in the chart above called the ionosphere. The ionosphere starts 30 miles above us and extends to 600 miles, including parts of the layer above.

The Sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, is very hot and produces a constant stream of ultraviolet and X-rays, some of which reach our atmosphere. When high-energy UV rays and X-rays hit the atmosphere, electrons are released from their parent atoms and molecules, forming a layer of electrons.

Now, here's the cool part: This layer - the ionosphere - is important because radio waves bounce off it.

However, the sun's activity in the ionosphere is not constant. When the sun has an 11-year cycle, the ultraviolet and x-ray energy (photon flux) produced by the sun varies by nearly 10 times. The density of the ionosphere changes, and so does its ability to reflect radio waves. When the Sun is at its peak activity and the ionosphere is "hot," swls and hams are likely to experience excellent long-distance propagation. When the sun is quieter, long-distance propagation weakens.

Every 11-year solar cycle is unique, but early signs suggest we may be on the verge of a cycle conducive to long-distance transmission:

The results could be startling . Decades ago, during a particularly hot solar cycle, I had a call from my station near Albany, New York, to a station in Georgia with only 4 watts of power. Another time I was talking to a ham in Christchurch, New Zealand - over 9,000 miles away - transmitting power with 100 watts of single sideband. During this same period, I would regularly listen to shortwave stations on the other side of the world.

Now, it’s your turn – what’s your favorite long distance story, either as a SWL or a ham? Please comment!

Babis:

< p> Not a ham station, but my most distant radio station signal in Corfu, Greece.

MW 1560KHz Home Radio wfme Indoor Small Portable Radio Internal Ferrite Antenna (Note, they only send max 50KW so this is a good catch)

SW 6507KHz vmc Marine Weather in Australia , indoor 3 meter wires, just over 15,000 kilometers of the troposphere, and the signals are indeed all hovering in the ionosphere, and since my location is on the other side of the world (with storms nearby), I'm guessing they're not using some giant kilowatt-class transmitter.

Marshall Harrison:

I was at the North Carolina Aircraft Carrier Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina on the south side of Jacksonville, Florida, on a 2-meter Having worked on a boat, about 350 miles, this is the longest 2 meter stretch of contact I've ever done. This is a special event ad hoc station that took place around 2010. You don't get a lot of opportunities like this in our hobby, and some people never get one. But when you do, they're magical.

W4MKH

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Aaron Ross:

I think there may be a connection between geomagnetic storms and Atlantic MW DX. Two or three times, after we experienced a geomagnetic storm (probably K5-K8), there was a huge 1 to 2 hour boost (like 10-20 dB) to the European megawatt station to my Philadelphia listening station, which The best European MW DX I have ever seen with my equipment and location. This was a few years ago, when there were more stations in France, Germany and other countries.

This is especially strange because my route to Europe will be to the north and will be weakened by these storms. So I usually get boosted in the south - specifically Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela.

To reiterate, the intensification occurred after the storm subsided.

So far I haven't seen anyone mention anything like this.

Robin:

Last summer, while I was sitting on the swing in my backyard, I made contact with a ham in Moscow using my 5-watt KX2 and AX1 antenna. The AX1 is clamped to the top of the swing, just above my head. I have many memorable contacts, but this one surprised me because I was using an AX1 in poor condition. I wasn't sure this actually happened until I received the QSL card from Russian Ham. ?

Adam Smith:

So for ten years I have been trying to listen to Radio St. Helena's annual broadcast. One year I finally hung a nice, discreet rope from the roof of my Federal Way house in WA for a long time...it was only 2″ above the top of the roof. Tight as a guitar string.

It was fed to a 9:1 balun into my Grundig Satellit 800 receiver.

I heard it. A receipt report came out and a year later I received the QSL card

Mission accomplished!

Gene Baptisti:

Not a ham, but a SWL. and CB'r, back in the late 1970's I was talking to a CB'r colleague at my home in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. During a break in the game, another helicopter pulled up and we learned he was in Zephyr Mountain, Florida. He couldn't believe we were in Pennsylvania. The conversation lasted about 5 minutes, then the air became noisy again and he left. For a 4-watt base station, that "jump" is pretty good.

Jim:

My experience has nothing to do with SW or HAM. I installed an old 12 B&W TV for one of my kids around 2001 or so and tuned it to Chicago's WBBM channel 2, apparently before analog equipment died out. On the bunny ears, Chicago stood black between clips and all I saw was a ghost of KXAS on Dallas 2 channel!! The conditions were just right and I was right there to capture it!

mangosman :

Jim:

Your reception is not reflected from the ionosphere, but conducted by the troposphere. This happens when there is cold air near the ground and warm air above the ground. Changes in air density cause a "tunnel" in which the signal bounces from one side to the other. It is most common around large bodies of water.

13dka:

"Sporadic E" (ionospheric) jumps are a well-known phenomenon and well documented at VHF, occasionally extending above 200MHz .

mangosman:

Jim did not say what time of day the reception took place.

Ionospheric propagation characteristics, including sporadic E /propagation/tr-modes.htm

mangosman:

Channel 2 in the United States is 54 - 60 MHz . Like all VHF and UHF channels it is affected by tropospheric ducts.

This channel and channels 3 - 6 are almost empty right now. An ideal opportunity to use it for similar coverage for digital radio station Mondiale.

In this band, the bandwidth of a DRM channel is half of an FM channel and a quarter of an HD broadcast channel, but it can play three high-quality stereo broadcast programs.

This is 300 DRM transmission channels, more than AM and FM combined.

Brian, W9IND:

The first thing that comes to mind is what I witnessed at the W9IMS (Indianapolis Motor Speedway) annual special event on May 7, 2018. Amazing spread. We had 20m and 40m stations at the time and I was chatting on the landline with our club president and he casually mentioned that we had been spotted in Australia at the DX Summit a few minutes earlier.

Sure enough, when I checked the sunspots, there was one from VK6APZ at 2301 UTC, indicating that W9IMS had "hrd in vk6 long path". That was 7:01 p.m. Indian time, no dark roads...the sun is still shining in Indiana and there are still 90 minutes until sunset. Not bad for 20 meters, I guess.

However, this is not the location of the 20-meter section. This is a 40 meter location! I blinked twice to make sure I read it correctly.

Yes, it definitely means 40 meters. But I wanted more than just a DX spot - I wanted a QSO! Or was this rare opportunity being passed over?

I quickly messaged our W9IMS anchor to tell him Call an Australian now. To my surprise, I soon heard the voice of a delighted and grateful VK radio amateur coming out of my speakers.

I have been a ham since 1971 and a SWLer for several years. But other than that day, I had never heard of a place in Indiana, Australia standing in the 40-meter section.

mangosman:

The shortest path would require the Indianapolis antenna to point a staggering 287 degrees and a path length of 17,800 kilometers, assuming VK6APZ is in Perth, Western Australia.

The reason why the orientation is north by west is because the earth is a sphere. As you move from the equator toward the poles, the usual Mercator projection gets longer and longer.

Robert Gary:

My most memorable contact was with the Amundsen Scott Antarctic Station in Antarctica at 1:50 a.m. EST in April 2014. (Amundsen Scott South Pole Station). As I recall, they were almost completely dark at that time of year, and of course, where I am in southern Ohio, it had been dark for a while. The guy was good in isolation and I got him after the first or second call. As you can imagine, the pile started to pile up pretty quickly, so it was especially cool to be the first to work with him.

Since this is the southernmost point in the world, it is even more special. 20 meters should not be open at that time of night, especially since there is no gray line spreading, I'm always amazed that we are able to work. Cheers! Robert K4PKM

Brian, W9IND:

You reminded me of another unforgettable teleportation experience. In 1988, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was working at 20 Meter CW when I copied an East German station calling CQ after midnight. “It’s weird to hear East Germany right now,” I responded from my apartment in Indianapolis.

At that time, East German radio stations usually used telephone numbers that started with Y, followed by two numbers, such as Y26 and Y54, and two letters. But this time the call had a higher number than usual, 88, and a 3-letter suffix - Y88POL.

Oh, well, I guess, WFWL (work first, worry later). The East German operation gave me a signal report and his name.

Then he stated his position: "A nt A..."

I was operating in a fairly dark room and couldn't see clearly what I was writing, so I haven't figured it out yet. Then came the rest of his QTH: "R C T I CA." I held my notebook up to the light of the radio.

Wait a minute...what? I gasped when I finally got a chance to read "Antarctica" that I had scrawled. This certainly explains why East German stations have unusual times and have "POL" in the suffix.

Needless to say, I treasure that card, which featured a desolate-looking photo of an Antarctic research station named Georg Forster. (There is an online copy here: https://web.hamradio.hr/9a6aa/Antarctica/y88pol.htm)

To this day I still get an adrenaline rush when I see it.

Marshall Harrison:

My story.

Back in August 2008, I had a QSO at home in Florida, Gia in Georgia (4L4WW) at 14.270. This distance is approximately 6,400 miles. The next morning I woke up to news of Russia's overnight attack on Georgia. I don't know much about politics, but that's not the point. The real problem is that amateur radio has a way of making work activities more personal.

Here comes my brother-in-law:

One of the radio station brother-in-law’s calls, BG5WKP, was through FM 29.6MHz to an amateur radio operator in Brazil at home. He was so excited that he could no longer use it. It can be described as chicken blood! Welcome to share your long-distance communication experience!