I’m going to continue on with the auroral theme this time, starting with some general discussions, and moving into the results some DXers had during the recent disturbed conditions. We also have a special request for those of you who have QSL’d WFOY-1240 at the end of the column.

We start with some messages that were posted in anticipation of the auroral conditions.

Charles Hutton <charlesh3@msn.com>

Here's the current data from www.spacew.com. Note that they are saying it may be the strongest auroral storm since 1989! Keep those radios tuned!

Bruce Conti, Nashua, NH <BACONTI@aol.com>

Question: can an intense aurora impact daytime reception? Had unusually strong signals from the Boston French Creole stations in the x-band this afternoon.

Russ Edmunds, Blue Bell, PA <wb2bjh@nrcdxas.org>

Yes. To whatever extent a daytime signal received at a given site is composed of skywave elements, those will be attenuated. The result of this, though is often counter-intuitive, because it is sometimes the interference between the groundwave and skywave components which make the signal appear unstable. Second, to whatever extent a daytime groundwave signal might be subject to interference by another skywave signal, that too would disappear, leaving the groundwave of the local signal.

All of this is variable depending on such things as location relative to the absorption and the relative levels on absorption relative to location.

Neil Kazaross, near Chicago, IL <neilkaz@earthlink.net>

One can only hope! The previous week's supposed super AU was never enough to do what I want it to, and that's totally eliminate any skywave from north of southern TX or southern FL. I've seen that a couple times here and then some remarkable DX can sneak thru from the very deep south and Latin America.

Russ Edmunds <wb2bjh@nrcdxas.org>

Want to see where the auroral zone is now?

Go to http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/index.html

Then we move on to a few messages during the storms…

Benjamin Dangerfield, Wallingford, PA <ben-dangerfield@verizon.net>

I’m not sure I understand the difference between the solar flares we've had the past few days and the sun spots we get all the time. It seems to me that sun spots stay on the sun whereas solar flares are ejected into the solar system. And that apparently these flares are more destructive to all radio systems. The sun spots increase or decrease in major and mini cycles, but what about the flares?Yes, conditions have really been crazy. It is interesting to see the same effect occurring to our list members all over North America. I wonder what has been happening in other parts of the world?Rick Kenneally <woodlandview@yahoo.com>

There are others who are much more knowledgeable than I am on this, but my understanding is that sun spots are storms in the sun's magnetic field.

The solar weather follows an 11-year cycle of peaks and valleys (we're currently a couple years into the downslope to a valley). When solar storms or sun spots are present, the sun's magnetic field is stirred up, increasing the likelihood of flares. A flare is like a magnetic bubble that pops with enough strength to eject particles from the sun's gravitational pull and hurl them into space. The term CME means Coronal Mass Ejection - meaning simply a blast of "sun stuff" thrown into space.

When the sun spots are on the side of the sun facing us, it is more likely that the "sun stuff" will be hurled at us. Think of a cannon pointed at us. When the cannon goes off, if the smoke makes a complete halo around the muzzle (from your perspective), you have a pretty good idea that the shot was aimed at you. Similarly, if the blast of solar particles causes a complete halo around the sun (a "full-halo CME") it means the blast is pointed directly at the Earth.

What's happening now is that there a big mother of a storm on our side of the sun, and it's acting stirring the sun's corona like a Cuisinart. So there is still time for more stuff to get thrown our way.

Now, my understanding is that when a flare happens, we first get hit with electromagnetic energy - light, RF, x-rays, etc. These travel at the speed of light and they cause a burst of ionization in the atmosphere. But it's not until the wave of charged particles – the actual coronal matter - hits us that things really get interesting.

Apologies for any errors, over-simplifications or incorrect metaphors. I'm looking forward to reading the posts from members who actually know about this stuff :-)

Russ Edmunds <wb2bjh@nrcdxas.org>

Sunspots are always there. Their size and number vary with the 11-year solar cycles. Sunspots eject radioactive matter into the solar system in various directions, depending on where on the sun's "face" the spots are located at the time. If they're near center, they're more likely to pose a problem because that means they're directed at us. This of course occurs with more severity and frequency during sunspot maxima, so they can occur even during sunspot minima.

And finally on this topic the listserve "Question of the Week" was "Since the solar conditions started last week, what observations have you made on the differences between a normal day, and one impacted by the sun? What about new catches?"

Bruce Conti <BACONTI@aol.com>

Observations: Auroral MW reception conditions can be very localized; one region gets hit hard with daytime-like groundwave reception at night, while another region experiences little or no changes in reception. Auroral conditions can be observed during the day, as experienced here with the reception of low-power unlicensed stations from Boston supposedly enhanced by reduced interference due to the solar activity. I did notice the lack of signals from WWV on all its shortwave frequencies.

New catches? None so far. It's been a dud here. Nice to read about the new catches of others in IDXD though.

Randy Stewart, Springfield, MO <jrs555t@smsu.edu>

The biggest difference, at least with the current geo-storm, is that one's usual pests (particularly the 50kW blowtorches) suddenly sound like DX! That, and the fact that regional and semi-local groundwave stations that are normally buried after dark by skywave signals have been much more audible. Overall, as I mentioned in a posting to the list last night, when conditions were really disturbed, signal strengths in general were as much as 20db down or worse. This actually made graveyard frequencies easier to listen to, as it seems there were fewer stations in the mix and it was easier for one or two stations to dominate.

New catches? They can be had, but this solar storm hasn't really been a "classic" aurora a la the late '80s/early '90s, where there actually seemed to be ENHANCEMENT of signals to the south, in addition to the severe attenuation of signals from the east/west/north of my QTH. Everyone has said the same thing--if, for example, you were looking for Caribbean or South American stations to be easily audible on frequencies where stronger North American stations usually dominate, forget it. The "enhancement," such as it was, from my listening location in southern Missouri, didn't extend any farther south than Cuba and Northern Mexico. Then too, there are actually fewer targets to shoot for, particularly in the Caribbean, where so many stations that used to be on 5-kHz split frequencies have left AM for FM, etc. On the other hand, if they HAD any skywave reception, folks to the north of me could have a field day logging Texas, Louisiana etc. stations that they couldn't normally hear.... This storm was actually highly entertaining, though, in that conditions were so UNpredictable from one moment to the next. I mean, I actually had the Toronto 740 station DOMINANT over KRMG Tulsa for about 15 minutes last night! With an A-index in the low 100's? Who woulda thunk it?Kevin Redding <amfmdx@fastq.com>

I had some TV Es I believe was storm related. Had St. Louis here in AZ and at the very end of October, that was very unusual.

On MW the band was very wiped out but fluctuating wildly from having DX to nothing in a matter of less than 10 minutes. Not even all the Mexicans and Cubans I regularly hear were coming in.

Adam Myrow <amyrow@midsouth.rr.com>The most interesting thing I noticed especially this week is the drastic increase in noise on the band. It made shortwave sound almost as noisy as longwave at times! It was almost surreal hearing WWV either fluttering rapidly or gone altogether.As for new catches, I have a few - 1620 WDHP Fredrickstead, US Virgin Islands, 720 KSAH Universal City, TX, WFLF 540 AM Pine Hills, FL, XEFW 810 Tampico, Mexico, 700 KSEV Tomball, TX, and 1110 XEOQ Rio Bravo, Mexico. Patrick Martin, Seaside, OR <mwdxer@webtv.net>DX conditions have been very AU with several openings to the Pacific this past week with many DUs. Samoa-540 has been arm chair copy at times. Some of the strongest AU conditions I have seen in years.Mike Brooker, Toronto, ON <aum108@idirect.com>When conditions are as brutal as they’ve been in the past few days, with nothing but local groundwave, TV/computer-generated static as loud as a jet plane, not even any Latinos stomping over the clear channels, and shortwave dead to boot, I reach for the little button on my radio marked "Power". I then ensure that said button is securely in the "off" position.

One new catch last night, on Friday night high school football cheater authority: WHIP-1350 Mooresville, NC. My third new logging of the 2003 high school football season.Tried for WJNT-1180 test but no luck. I get WHAM on groundwave so I couldn't count on them being killed by the aurora.

Frederick R. Vobbe <fredv@nrcdxas.org>

I would have to agree (that Auroral MW reception conditions can be very localized). While speaking on the phone with several DXers during this event, we noticed that the fades did not occur at the same times, nor affected the same stations.One interesting thing was noted. We are all used to hearing the "selective fade", (and if you did not hear the explanation of this by Leonard Kahn on AR-#1, you need to), I noticed that some of the fades were quick and abrupt. In one case, WGY-810 sounded like they were physically turning up and down their power in 3-second intervals. I decided to connect a Tec-2710 spectrum analyzer up to the antenna and watch the signals for a while. The down side of this is that the Q of my antenna system, due to tuners, is somewhat sharp, so accurate measurements of the entire AM band could not be made. However, what I saw was random "sweeps" where signals would disappear, and then reappear. The effect looked like someone was tuning a loop across WBAP, WGY, CKLW, WBBM, WABC, WJR, WSB, CHWO.The other thing I noticed was that the noise floor was about 4.7 or more less than normal, producing signals that normally are not heard when the sky is clear of the effects of auroral propagation. For example, 1230 is usually a mess with only WCOL popping up from time to time in the mess of noise, (usually benchmarked at around S9). At the peak of this event, WCWA in Toledo was clearly heard with the noise floor being around S5-6. (On 1270) WXYT(Detroit) was very audible, where normally Marysville OH and a host of others make it hard to hear. Benjamin Dangerfield <ben-dangerfield@verizon.net>So far I've heard nothing new or of real interest. It would be nice to have the type of auroral conditions that bring in the rare stations like the lower South Americans or maybe lower Africa, or even Central America or perhaps Curacao or Surinam.

And the noise level is awful. Added to the higher noise level is my area noise from the power lines. This wasn't a problem the first day or so of the solar activity as the ground was soaked from two or three days of steady rain and the faulty insulators around here weren't malfunctioning. But when everything dried out later this week the noise returned. Now this noise is worse during the daytime, but when you get mostly ground wave reception at night you also get the noise as on a daytime basis.Still waiting for the electric company fixers as promised weeks ago.

Russ Edmunds <wb2bjh@nrcdxas.org>

The noise level is also influenced by our having had nearly 6 inches of rain within 72 hours at the beginning of last week. I have places in my yard where the ground is still wet ! Wet ground is bad enough for the noise level here, but auroras make it worse. WFOY-1240And finally a request for some information about WFOY-1240.Paul Courson, WA3VJB < --WA3VJB--@amfone.net>

Hi Dave, I wonder if you might be able to float a call for verification letters for reception of WFOY, 1240Kc, St. Augustine. I am looking for international spans, but also some of the greater distances across North America.

The station in March discontinued its operations from the site next door to the Fountain of Youth, after the owner sold the property to a non-broadcast private party.

If you have access to the ham radio magazine QST, I've been fortunate to have had an article published on the station. Please see the November issue, page 56, for details.If you can help me acquire some additional materials, I plan some follow up stories..If you have any information for Paul, you can contact him directly as shown above (delete the dashed from the e-mail address) or let me know and I will get him in touch with you.

That’s all for this time…happy DXing.