Our local ARES group recently got an NVIS (Near Vertical Incident Skywave) antenna for tactical HF communication within the County. During a couple of test drives of the antenna with the group we tested from 6 meters to 80 meters just to see where we could poke holes. As with all things HF, and perhaps especially with NVIS, solar conditions and time of day played a large role in what we could accomplish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since we have been doing testing more often it seemed it would be nice to have a quick reference for the club. So we created a page for the club to use as a quick reference on local solar conditions: https:\/\/www.ab0pc.org\/index.php\/examslicensing\/solar-weather\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The antenna we are using the the Radio Oasis EZ NVIS antenna. It is a 4 wire antenna with it’s matching unit 12-15′ off the ground in the center of the 4 wires. Here’s a link to the antenna: https:\/\/www.cheapham.com\/ez-nvis\/<\/a> The antenna worked great and was quick and easy to deploy with a tripod. We found having the matching unit lower to the ground seemed to clean up the sound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n During an NVIS exercise with the club in which KI0PF was participating, mark an I (KE0LTD) had established a very solid NVIS connection between North and South Park. I asked him in a follow-up email if he would provide any resources on solar weather that he liked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We have a really cool resource directly available to us – the Boulder Ionosonde, which gives near-real-time ionograms. Here’s the real-time link: https:\/\/www.ngdc.noaa.gov\/stp\/IONO\/rt-iono\/latest\/BC840.png<\/a> Clicking on either should give you the latest ionogram, which plots frequency on the X axis and height in km on the Y-axis. I’m still learning the interpretation of the graph, but the immediately useful<\/em> data to us are the two lines at lower left “D” (distance in km) and “MUF” (maximum usable freek). The one to look at is the first one at 100km, which will give a pretty good idea what will be most likely to work at the 0 – 60mi ranges we’ll have inside the county or to Denver, etc.<\/p> Just as cool, you can see the historical Boulder MUF data for every hour of every day in 2019 here:<\/p>The Antenna<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Below are a few pics of it setup.<\/p>\n\n\n\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n\n\n\nFrom KI0PF<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Here’s a backup link: https:\/\/lgdc.uml.\/common\/ShowRandomIonogram?ursiCode=BC840<\/a><\/p>