Bruce, ZF2NT, asked about whether or not there was auroral activity possibly
depressing US & VE signal strengths and lowering his score. The answer is
YES! there was.
There is a very useful NOAA website that displays pictures of the auroral
"coverage" of the North & South poles. You can find it at
www.sel.noaa.gov/pmap/
I use it during the contest (along with WWV) to check polar absorption and
plan operating strategy.
Although quite unusual, even though we had very low A & K indices during
ARRLCW, there was significant polar absorption on Friday, Saturday & Sunday
evenings, causing a large deterioration in the path to JA - which was very
evident here in Connecticut as compared to last year, when there was
practically NO polar absorption with similarly low A & K indices, and I had
GREAT JA runs.
Oddly enough, this year the polar absorption seemed to peak in the evenings
and decline in the mornings. Same with the K indices.
CT1BOH has a good website that also has this auroral map as well as other
propagation indices. I think his site is at
www.qsl.net/ct1boh/propagat.htm
73
Bob KQ2M
--
CQ-Contest on WWW: http://lists.contesting.com/_cq-contest/
Administrative requests: cq-contest-REQUEST@contesting.com
|