Re: [IRCA] India to Illinois on 1566

["CHARLES HUTTON" <charlesh3@xxxxxxx>]

Bob:

I don't know about the LF data you mentioned, but there's been a bit of work 
on 160 meters by people with handfuls of Beverages. Tom Rauch (W8JI) and 
Bill Tippett (W4 someothing or another) come to mind first. Also Carl 
Luteschweig (present or former CQ Propagation editor, name badly mangled no 
doubt), K9 something or another. It seems to be frequent that signals coming 
overthe pole or hitting the auroral zones are badly skewed. High latitude 
east coast to Europe paths show the signals arriving from (more or less) 
easterly directions rather than the expected NE or NNE.

But I have my doubts in this case. The reception was at 2035 CDT. Geoclock 
shows me that sunrise at Nagpur was 0544 local time (0014 GMT, 1914 CDT). 
That's 1 hour and 21 minutes before the reception. I have heard many TA's 
and TP's an hour or two after the relevant sunrise, but that happens with 
powerful signals (like Korea 1566 or West Germany 1586) and what was an 
S9+30 signal was then an S8 signal so long after sunrise. There's just no 
way to escape that D layer attenuation at the sunrise side of the path.

I'm also thinking about the part of the reception where he talked about 
Brazil on 1570. That ain't gonna happen anywhere in NA except Newfoundland. 
Frankly, I wonder if this guy is doing some wishful thinking. As for the 
"details", I couldn't even call them details. For all that was described, it 
could have been a test of the supposed-to-be-on-the-air-soon Gabon 1566 
superpower transmitter.

As for the part about limited options for MW direction finding, I'd say MW 
DXers are more loop-friendly than any other group and most understand that 
you can do decent DF'ing on TA / TP paths. I continue to see 160 meter hams 
that don't believe this is possible because "skywave propagation scrambles 
things too much". It's the 160 meter crowd that is usually optionless in my 
mind.


Chuck

>From: "Bob Foxworth" <rfoxwor1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of 
>America<irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: <am@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>CC: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of 
>America<irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: [IRCA] India to Illinois on 1566
>Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 09:23:42 -0400
>
>
>
> > The bearing to Nagpur is about 13 degrees..I wonder just how much of
>this
> > transpolar path is in daylight at this time of the year !!
>
>
> > > But today there was some skip - I logged AIR Nagpur on 1566 kHz!
>That is a
> > > very
> > > big deal in my location.
> > >
>
>
> > > Nagpur is right smack dab in the center of India, which is probably
>why it
> > > was
> > > chosen for a 1000 kW transmitter, approx. 79 E, 21 N. 2035 CDT =
>0135 UT,
> > > or
> > > 0705 IST, i.e. close to SR at the transmitter and SS at the
>receiver.
> > > Perhaps
> > > someone will check out the grayline at that time on Summer Solstice
>to see
> > > what
> > > the path looks like in those terms (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING
>DIGEST)
>
>
>I recall even back in the GPN days of long ago, some discussion
>of paths not necessarily taking a straight line along (over) the
>earth's surface but rather bending in an arc. I now think it's possible
>that a signal could follow an arc along a grayline path. The time
>of day sounds possible for this to happen, but I am not nearly
>an expert in this. MW DXers have limited options to determine
>the direction from which a signal arrives, but I have heard
>reports of hams with directional LF antennas reporting signals
>coming from unexpected directions, not from the GCP (compass)
>path. And in July the sun is already noticeably moving away
>from its northern-most solstice approach to 23 degrees north.
>
>I spent some time listening to Nagpur 1566 when I spent some
>time in Tamil Nadu and Kerala states a few years ago. The
>limited details he posted seem pretty valid to me, as far as it
>goes. I always thought this one was directional towards the
>north and northwest, perhaps to reach New Delhi and maybe
>Pakistan, and where I was (to the south) would have been off the
>back end, as it was never really strong for me in Madras. If
>so, then the ERP towards NAm is even greater than just
>power alone would indicate. But here I am just speculating.
>
>India can be somewhat secretive about details of their
>radio infrastructure. Maybe someone can find their site on
>Google and do a tower count, but I have no idea where
>exactly to start looking. Some fellow in Europe posted
>the coords of the VLF DHO38 site, on a LF list, and upon
>zooming in, (in maps.google.com) you could see the
>red/white banding on the towers. This may be a similar
>case.
>
>One of the big problems with understanding this kind of
>mechanism is the random haphazard nature of data collection.
>If more people had systems such as Nick Hall-Patch uses,
>to log and record carrier levels daily, we might find that
>receptions of unexpected signals could well happen more
>often than anyone expects. Remember the number of times
>the Chinese FS station in Xinjiang was heard (1525 kHz)
>in the northeast US, probably a half dozen times in my own
>experience. The problem is that if propagation happens
>only a couple percent of the time, and DXers are listening
>to the correct frequency only a couple percentage of the
>time, the probability of success is the product of those
>numbers, which is a very small number. An automated
>signal logging receiver would then make the probability
>equal to only the propagation condition, as I see it.
>
>So in short, yes, I believe it could happen, but very
>infrequently.
>
>- Bob                     sent 0923 edt
>
>
>
>
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