A New Article by Nils Schiffhauer, and a Propagation Guide from the US

RadioUser contributor and friend Nils Schiffhauer DK80K has been in touch concerning his new article Propagation and MUF – Some Notes. We expect to be featuring Niels’s observations in some more detail in one of the forthcoming issues ion RadioUser; however, for now, Niels wrote: “We all know that propagation largely follows solar activity – on a diurnal scale, as well as along the seasons and, above all, the solar cycle – see diagram at the top of the page. We have just entered Solar Cycle 25, and, with that, once again some unchartered waters filled with high hopes and some shallows. This is a good opportunity to have a look into the rear view mirror, as it were, because - in general terms - we can see part of the future in the past. To do so, I undertook some explorative data-analysis, which is available for free from the following sources:

• Ionospheric data from Ionosonde Juliusruh of the Leibniz-Institute for Atmospheric Physics at the University of Rostock, downloaded via the Digital Ionogram Database.
• Solar data from WDC-SILSO, Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels.
• Geomagnetic data from the Space Weather Prediction Center/NOAA (DGD series of data).
• Field strength data from ITU’s Databank D2.”

For the fully-illustrated article, in English, you can check out the website below:

You may also wish to explore CQ’s new book offering in this area:

The Shortwave Propagation Handbook (4^th edition).

We will review this title in the May 2021 issue of RadioUser.

https://dk8ok.org/2021/03/11/propagation-and-muf-some-notes

https://tinyurl.com/278t8yv4