#Tag
Space Weather
An M1.3 flare peaked at 13h18 UT 13 Oct. A type II radio emission was observed, indicating the potential for a CME being launched.
The flare originated from Earth-facing active region AR4246, which has been responsible for several flares during the last 24 hours.
Service outage
Vodafone in the UK and most major UK internet and mobile providers are currently suffering a major outage with broadband service. Basic mobile voice and text appears still to be working. I'm not yet aware how widely this outage has spread.
As a consequence the propagation maps on my website are not updating. Please check back periodically for further updates.
Service outage
Vodafone in the UK and most major UK internet and mobile providers are currently suffering a major outage with broadband service. Basic mobile voice and text appears still to be working. I'm not yet aware how widely this outage has spread.
As a consequence the propagation maps on my website are not updating. Please check back periodically for further updates.
Space Weather
An M2.7 flare peaked at 09h19 UT from almost Earth-facing region AR4246. A minor R1 radio blackout affected eastern and southern Africa.
An M1.9 flare also erupted from AR4246 at 05h27 UT 13 Oct.
Increasing solar activity has increased noise on the HF bands. Conditions on HF are mostly "fair" at this time.
Radio Propagation
Quite good VHF tropospheric propagation tonight is sending me the Swiss 2m beacon HB9HB in JN37 on 144.448 MHz. Distance 912km bearing 108掳. Received using Airspy HF+ with a Youloop.
@g7izu
Aa described, the news is improbabile: a "distant" satellite cannot simply orbit over baltic regions alone: or it' s distant (geostationary) and thus vertically over equator at 36000 km, or it is someway "nearer" having a orbit continuosly changing day by day or hour by hour, hundred or thousands km from any part of the earth. Intermittent emissions are coherent only with low orbits or voluntary jamming.
@Davide_Sandini With respect, it's probably best to listen to the podcast before criticizing. In my post I was directly quoting the summary provided on the podcast page, which actually says "a distantly orbiting satellite somewhere over the Baltic Sea". It does not specifically state what it is orbiting around, although we all know that satellites tend to orbit the Earth or whatever object to which they are gravitationally bound.
Non-geostationary Molniya-orbit satellites were also mentioned in the podcast which orbit the Earth with high points above the Arctic regions. The Baltic is at the forefront of GPS interference stories due to deliberate interference caused by Russian assets in the region.
The podcast describes detailed analysis of data sourced from widely positioned ground-based (fixed) GPS receivers that suffer occasional and brief bursts of interference, which interrupts reception of the weak GPS signals on the L1 GPS frequency. Diligent research has narrowed the source of interference to a few candidate satellites thought to be in geostationary orbit in the vicinity of Europe. The interference may be unintentional.
GNSS: A mystery satellite has been jamming GPS in Europe
This month, in a BBC radio episode of Science in Action, it's been revealed that since 2019 an intermittent yet powerful signal has been causing GPS failures across Europe and the North Atlantic. The episodes have been thankfully brief so far, but all the signs suggest it comes not from soldiers or aeroplanes, but from a distantly orbiting satellite somewhere over the Baltic Sea. It may not be malevolent, it could be a fault, but the net of suspicion is tightening.
Listen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct6yfy
Radio Propagation
FT8 is propagating well on 2m tropo from Poland into my Youloop and Airspy HF+. Distance 1,423km. Also decoding Denmark, Germany France and northern Spain.
This aligns well with the tropospheric radio forecast by F5LEN.
Space Weather
After a long period of quiet, an M2.0 flare erupted from very slightly behind the west limb at 12h30 UT 09 Oct.
It was accompanied by an impressive loop of material that fell back into the sun.
Radio Propagation
WSPR and FT8 are incredible modes for plotting radio propagation.
Today I'm receiving 10mW WSPR beacon transmissions on 14 MHz from amateur balloon SP6MPL in mid-Atlantic and at 13,680m altitude. My receiver is an Airspy HF+ Discovery with the basic Youloop antenna at 2m above ground.
Also on the map is Polish station SQ3XZ on 21 MHz running only 1mW! Offscreen, I'm also receiving VK3QN near Melbourne running 5W. WSPR is a low-power data mode which takes 2 minutes to send a message, usually consisting of just a callsign, locator and power level information.
I'm currently decoding all WSPR and FT8 bands using two instances of WSJT-X v3, using the HF+ for WSPR and a Yaesu FT857D for FT8, feeding data to https://wspr.aprsinfo.com/ for WSPR and https://shorturl.at/ENYjH (PSK Reporter) for FT8. All HF bands are scanned several times per hour.
For offline mapping I'm using Hamclock and Grid Tracker.
We are a network of scientists, developers and organizations building the next generation of digital spaces for open science.
