Every day is getting better and better at present. Some areas of high E MUF again this afternoon.
I was unable to find any paths across the high MUF areas and was using FM Broadcast and AIS into the Bight. There are no VK6's on 2m at present which is not helping the situation.
I downloaded the newest version of WSPRView this afternoon. Its really great.
EASY to see whats going on with the E MUF. I've taken a number of screen shots to show people a look at how I use it and what Im looking for.
I should mention that WSPRView can be used in many different configurations depending upon what your wishing to observe. Long distances or short distances or both.
For this example, im watching for areas of high E layer MUF. Mainly to then be able to proceed up the spectrum to FM radio Es and then 144 MHz Es, and possibly 162 MHz AIS.
The best way I find to do this is to have many stations or beacons on 6m WSPR. You then look for short 6m E paths between about 400 and 900 km roughly. Maybe 300 to 600 km on 6m when the E MUF is above 144 MHz. This is nice, but in practice at ranges of 400 to 900 km, you need to be able to work out what is a true E signal and distinguish that from other shorter signals like tropo, aircraft, E backscatter etc.
Using WSPR you can do this, because usually a true E signal from a station running just 5 or 10 watts will be very strong like +10dB or so. I look for them from +1dB and stonger. Usually if a signal has come via another mode like tropo, the signals over the same distance will be much weaker, usually -1dB or less.
After 7pm this evening the 6m E MUF really picked up on many paths to the Adelaide area from Melbourne and Canberra, in the +dB region.
This is what the WSPRView screen looked like -
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You can see paths there as short as 580 km at +20 dB. Its quite possible that 88 to 108 MHz was running across this mid point and maybe even 144 MHz. But people need to be in the right positions. For me, going across this mid-point puts signals into the great Aust Bight, and I can only investigate this with 162 MHz AIS, but this is very high and probably not running at the time. But I was watching.
The black background spots indicate an alert condition, which is great to observe at a Glance.
WSPRView 2 -
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WSPRVIew 3 -
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WSPRView 4 -
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Very tired when writing this, so if there are mistakes, I apologies, can fix tomorrow.
