The December 2019 Rambler is now available!

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Hello all.  I’ve made another measurement of the observed noise level in the 80 metre band as a follow-up to the measurement done in early October and do see some expected changes.  Here’s the plot:

It should be immediately obvious that the noise trend during daylight hours is less saturated at the -110 dBm. level than it was in the October record, which is consistent with the premise that the lower sun angle will cause less D Layer ionisation.  Yet, there are a couple more observations I take from this measurement when compared to that of October:

1 – The night time noise mean level is lower than October.  Could it be that the lower sun angle is also causing less F Layer ionisation, thus there being less “visible” area being refracted back to the observer?

2 – The day time saturation level of -110 dBm. is essentially unchanged from that observed in October.  I’m not sure about why this is, other than this level being the result of my antenna+coax noise temperature.  I re-checked the instrumentation noise level, i.e. that of only the digitiser with antenna disconnected, and it sits at around -117 dBm., as it was in October, so it would seem that there’s at least enough separation between the noise floor of the measurement set and the coax+antenna+sky.

So there it is.  I’ll continue with these measurements once a month until the summer of 2020 and perhaps combine all the monthly jpegs into a movie to have a more dynamic view of how things change throughout the year.

73,

Hugo

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