HF Propagation - SARCNET

Propagation of shortwave radio signals around the world is vitally important to radio operators. We use the ionosphere to reflect our signals back and forth between ionised layers, hundreds of kilometres above the earth, and the ground. The process is called skip and is powered entirely by the sun. Without the sun, amongst other things, we wouldn't be able to send radio signals much beyond the horizon. There are, of course, many on-line resources to explore this fascinating phenomenon. They provide space weather reports, indices and forecasts. For starters, we recommend having a look at the Australian Space Weather Forecasting Centre at https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/. In addition to this, radio operators publish their own information via on-line databases such as pskReporter and WSPRnet. However, we found that some of the important data available is only displayed as a snapshot in time. Because of the sun's diurnal influence, radio propagation changes dramatically between daytime and nighttime. To try to understand the daily effects of the ionosphere and radio propagation we needed more dynamic views. This page provides our attempts at capturing relevant information over a 24-hour period and displaying it as a short video.