Navigating Solar Activity in the Ham Radio World

New England and New Hampshire and beyond . Whether you're a regular listener or a first-time guest , we're excited to have you here and appreciate your support and thanks for tuning in to tonight's episode . So let's get into the show . I'm your host , first name's Eric , call sign's N1JUR and I'm with my co-host .

Those two new tees are the Ham Radio Found Me shirt that's a favorite of ours and Todd's and my new favorite one off of the Only Hams kind of crowd is Send QSLs .

So you know , head on over there , pick up your shirts and , you know , support the show , as we all appreciate those folks that have supported us , and we always have stickers and hats and a whole boatload of other great stuff over there .

So , you know , take a second point your browser over in that direction and check us out and help support us , and we thank you guys for those that have . And so with that , we also have got some other great stuff coming up . Obviously , we're in the month of June and we are going to be doing some awesome stuff for field day .

Uh , paul , I and todd will probably be hanging out friday night at our field day site , uh , doing a happy hour kind of live stream . Um , so there'll be some great , uh great food , great , uh , you know , drinks and us just playing radio and hanging out and having fun .

We may have a couple of special guests , we'll never know , but we'll keep that lit on that for a little bit . But either way , we'd love to have you guys come and hang out with us as well and maybe work our ways right into field day , and with that we also have our favorite segment here , doing good , good .

Let us know what's going on in your clubs and we'll be happy to promote and give a little love to you and your club . And you know , share the share , the wealth . Share , share the good stuff . You know I don't know about you guys . You know I want to hear about it .

This is where we help Todd study for his extra class license . As always , in each and every episode , we pick three questions from the extra class pool and we're starting in the new pool to test his knowledge and hoping to see if he can get his upgrade . So if you obviously like to follow along , you can head over to hamstudyorg .

It's a great resource and helps us prepare for your test , and is always recommended by three out of four volunteer examiners , and the American Dental Association was obviously unavailable or common at the time of survey . So , without any further delay , let's head over to our VE Quizmaster . Take it away , paul .

C A space station , beacon station or telecommand station ? Or D . All of these choices are correct .

I can never remember see how it's , how bad I am , so don't worry about it uh , yeah , I think it's a 1.2 gig okay , so I think so I don't know All right .

We want to know and , as always , we'd like to recognize you on the next episode for your hard work and effort . You can always email us at live free and ham at gmailcom , and we're surely going to mention you on the next show . And so , sadly , with that , in our usual format , you know how are you guys doing . How's your ham radio week there for all ?

And then on the 300 , I might be working or trying to see and then all of a sudden it shows up . And I don't want it to show up and I've got to figure out the hit back or clear or whatever , and I can't see anything anyway , so I'm not a big fan of it .

But I I just let aprs run and let me tell you a six , seven hour drive . If it was beeping at me the whole time , that would , that would drive me nuts do you , do you wait ?

When I'm trying to , I'm trying to look for a frequency and all of a sudden I pick someone up that I can fix that .

Now we're dealing with 11 to 12 year olds , that's it . Yeah , it's too much and it's supposed to be an hour and a half . It ends up being three hours and I'm just like dude , we cannot do this all summer , like I can't do this . Yeah , that's a lot , um , so , yeah , so I've been , I've been doing that .

We had a our town I am her so he again played in the state championship . So we went to baseball at uh delta dental stadium , where the fisher catch play . So we got to see the kids play there and , uh , they got killed , but it was cool to see them on the big field and stuff .

And then today I almost didn't make this because I was at a cookout for the travel team baseball . Or baseball or baseball . So if it's not actually playing baseball , it's watching baseball , practicing baseball or going to cookouts for baseball .

So ham radio has not really happened this much for me this week , but in two weeks I'll be heading down south to the beach , that's all it will be . And I will be setting up at the beach house . I will be bringing my gear to parks and I'm looking forward to that .

A little ham radio poda fun in a different state might even I'm not sure how far I am to south carolina , but if I get up early enough maybe I can road trip it before anyone gets up and cruise down there and get over the border and pick up another state . But uh , where are you going ?

And then just stop at the park for you know , 20 minutes , set up your radio , make 20 , 25 contacts , 10 for all that matters and then get back in the car and then , you know , get back on the highway and drive it . It's a great break . I guarantee they won't mind it .

The headrest yeah , so I'm going to make sure he downloads a shitload of movies and we're just going to go for it .

So , uh , I found this guy when I was down there , um , and he he's got a van and he just sets it up and he's got all his antennas on his van , so he's just in the van doing his thing um , yeah , I'll do it in the truck , but it's a five fur nice because of the close , the close proximity to all the monuments and the national mall and everything like

yeah you have to do .

Let him play around with it . And no guarantees that it's going to give temperature . Some days it gives temperature and other days it doesn't so it's got a mind of its own , random , but uh yeah , it's a tempest weather station highly recommended . It was my fault , I dropped it and it cracked , so I duct taped it together .

And he , uh , and then I I went and looked and all of a sudden I was like getting temperature readings and everything . So I was like shit , for the last two weeks it's been given temperatures Cause I just wasn't paying attention to it , cause it really wasn't , it was just doing like all the other stuff .

So , uh , I'm going to put the new one up , give Eric the old one and hopefully it'll keep working . So it wasn't even it's not even the thing cracked , it's like the , it's like the outside thing just cracked , but it's not like it cracked into the inside . So I don't know what was right , I don't know .

So I'm pro thinking before I rip this deck up , because once I rip the deck up then i'm'm kind of stuck . I'm going to have to really You've got to get it done .

my storage tent , uh , shelter logic like , and I cleaned it all up , I put moth balls down . I go back into it in the spring and there's a freaking more pile of in the same spot where all the I'm like what the fuck is ? I have no idea what it is Like , just like .

I mean it is like piles , like I had to take like the snow shovel and like literally like 10 of them to just get it out . I'm like what the hell is this ?

So I'm going to set up the game camera and freaking catch a little bastard and see who's in there , find out when he's coming , and maybe I'll have to shoot it , because it's really pissing me off , because I'm like what the hell ? It's like where we store all our pool furniture and stuff over the winter and then I'm dragging it all out .

I'm like what the heck ? How did this thing get in here again ? I mean it smelled like mothballs in there . I thought animals don't like that stuff . You got me I only know him yeah , so that's so . So that's that that there isn't uh near .

That is where I'm putting my uh , my uh antenna , oh the dx commander and I was clearing that all out and I waited a couple weeks and now it's like covered in fricking weeds that I had all out , so I got to go and attack that . So all these things have to be done within the next two weeks before I go on vacation .

As we all know , the bananas Savannah bananas are big , you know , baseball team that everybody wants to watch tickets and get tickets . They were at Fenway this Saturday , yeah , yes , yesterday . And uh , the college guys , uh , all got um because one of the players who was a previous manager on the team two years ago , basically , you know , still stayed in touch .

Long story short , it's now a PR guy or something like that for the bananas themselves . So he , you know , he's like hey , you know , if any of the Johnson Wales guys want to come and do you know concessions or souvenirs or something like that at Fenway , they'll give you a jersey , you'll do , you know that stuff , and then you get to watch the game .

And so Cody was like . My son was like should I do this ? I'm like dude , are you dumb ? I would do that . I mean , can I take your place ? He's like no , it's got to be guys who are playing on the team . I'm like fine , then you need to go . And so he went .

I mean , they had a whole bunch of old Red Sox players come and pitch in the real game and he's got a nice button-down , typical baseball jersey , nice jersey for what he got so everybody in the concession stand could match . And he's got a nice on Savannah Bananas on the front and he had a blast . So that's my baseball thing . I'm kind of jealous .

Tickets were totally sold out at that place . You couldn't get anything . I was , you know pretty perturbed .

It's like you go there , it starts at like two and they go until like five and then they do a two hour game and it's like yeah he left at like 10 o'clock to get down there by , like you , barely like 11 , 30 , 12 .

Um , I have to say thank you for mentioning on the live stream I don't know if you saw in the discord , in our little private discord , um , the lovely res guys have uh , heard your cries , todd , and said that you know , uh , you were going to buy one , so they're saving you from having to me spend your money and I am going to be getting , uh , you know ,

an eval from them to to kind of do a match up . So I'm going to finally get a chance to put the res 80 , the , the um the mad dog coil 80 and my um Wolf River coil 80 all up against each other and test all out . So I may have to elicit some of you guys help especially when we do some whisper tests .

And , yeah , outside of that , I'm still man , I'm struggling to try to finish up the antenna video for the Faraday and my Ed ed uh fong antenna . I just been , you know , it's been kicking my butt .

I just , you know , today I wasn't gonna try to wrap it up , but then I was like you know what , you know , I'm a youtuber , I can make this side to take the day off . So I took the day off and , you know , through the whole entire thing , I'm like man , I should have done that .

Man , I should have done that video , I should have finished it off , should have finished it off and so have finished it off . And so , yeah , it's not , you should have done it . This morning it was pouring out . Well , that's what I was hoping to do . I was like that was like I was raining .

I could , you know , get the raining portion , you know kind of set up for it , and I was like I don't want to be on the rain , it's not fun . I don't want to be like I impatiently for that that you're gonna have to wait impatiently more for .

Um , so , uh , you know that that's kind of what I've been doing , ham radio wise , um , oh , there's one other thing . I uh , oh , I'm finishing uh , up , uh , the little bit , uh , tidbits here and there to get to my um 891 , uh , printed , ryan , um , finally , I finally got my little 3d . I don't know if you can see this here , if I hold it up here .

Uh , for those that are listening on the podcast , I'm holding up my little 3d sand . This is the first version of the stand it went from , actually , this , which is the cad cardboard cutout to , you know , a 3d printed version , which is a little too small to now . You know , the second or third iteration , uh , ryan's working on printing that for me .

Um , so I should have that , hopefully in a day or two .

And and then I think I've got everything I need for grounding and ready to mount the radio and I've got a couple little add on switches that I'm putting in that are , you know , usb-c so I can do digital from the truck , and you know , I'm putting in a toggle switch for being able to switch between , we'll say , shore power , which is is truck power , and a

separate battery , so I don't have to drain my truck battery if I want to do longer extended stuff . I'm doing a whole bunch of things that I'm hopefully have together truck .

You know , if I'm ever going to put any amps , it's going to be in the shack , not in my truck . It'll be a two for one sale .

You know , for us it's , you know , or for maybe you as a listener , if you're new to the hobby , you know it might be something mysterious and technical and every time someone talks about it your head kind of spins . But at the same time I want to kind of put a little warning label up front to this .

First and foremost , none of the Live Free and Ham hosts are experts . We are all learning , we're all understanding . So I don't want to hear any hate mail from the old timer saying you don't understand propagation . Yeah , I know we're all learning . We're just trying to share some of our knowledge and pass it on .

And again , a lot of the stuff that I come from , at least when I can speak for myself , is that it's a very generalized understanding . So we might get into some technical stuff , we might point you in the direction , some technical details and websites and books and stuff . But know that you know we are just in the same boat as you .

But we're hopefully , you know , giving you a little bit more , you know knowledge , so you can be a little bit more equipped to understand the , the , the mysterious sfi index , and whether or not uh , you know solar flares are your friend or enemy all I know is that 20 meters this summer versus last summer sucks , because last summer I was talking to australia

like they were my next door neighbor .

Yeah , it was the beginning of may yeah , this the it's been complete crap like 20 meters has been terrible and I don't know what that storm did to the 20 meter band , but it needs to correct itself because it's really getting annoying well .

You know , when we first started , say , you know , during , uh , you know , say , the pre-covid and covid , um , and then leading kind of past that and 20 was kind of a little rough here and there , but I mean we still had a lot of great times . I mean , my contacts show that I'm literally you know like where I was hitting , on average 60 to 80 contacts .

You know , for an hour at a poda park I'm barely scraping like 10 or 15 now , and that's like you know , that's a testament . You know those numbers are hard and fast for sure . You know , and that's like you know , that's a testament . You know those , those numbers are hard and fast for sure . Um , you know what's your experience ?

Me personally , I , I mean , I go for it and , like I said , I , I think it makes me , it makes me a better ham radio operator , because I got to work harder to make the contacts um , I got to be very apologetic . Thanks for your patience .

Thanks for your patience , because my experience lately , at least , doing poda with the ham radio , is like it comes and goes in a way , so like I'll get the first half , but then the second half of their call sign drops off and then they repeat it and it comes back and I'm like just the sec , just the second half , just the second half , because you know ,

every like few seconds it drops out , it comes back in or it sounds like , at least for me it sounds like a lot of people are off frequency but they're not um , and yeah , it's just been , it's just been more difficult .

I've also been getting like wisconsin a lot and they've been the clearest , which is crazy because like wisconsin's not something we normally at least I don't normally get them , period . I mean , normally I get the south .

Um , but yeah , wisconsin and minnesota , I've been getting a lot of them and they've actually been better for me than like hitting florida or north carolina south carolina , which are normally like real easy to hit , you know , know , at least from New Hampshire , so but yeah , it's been a challenge , but uh , it doesn't prevent me from going out and doing the

activations , it's just it'd be nice to just to have some clear , you know , five , nines again on 20 meters .

And what is what is , you know , the solar flux index ? And right , uh , so I really wanted to try and understand it more . I found a great PDF online , victor Echo 2 , x-ray , india , papa Editions , and we'll link to it , but it's a very great explanation of how to understand the propagation reports and what it all means .

The propagation reports and and what it all means . Um , you know , right now , the the to like , make it super , super simple , right , you want low a and k and you and you want high sunspot but a low solar flux which , when you say that it's like , oh wow , that makes so much sense , but then you're like what does that actually freaking mean ?

What does that all mean , right ?

They were fluctuating but they were really low , you know , now we're consistently a hundred plus and well , most days that plays to our benefit . You know when , when we have instances like we had with that G5 storm um , which was actually a combination of like five storms , that that all came together , um , you know , it's just , it overloads the ionosphere .

And so if you , if you go back to like a high school chemistry , right , you know that every atom is a , you know , a nucleus with protons and electrons , right , well , those electrons are free energy . And so when the ionosphere gets blasted by the sun , those electrons kick free .

And so then you've got all these free electrons floating around and they're just there , they're blocking your signal and they're reflecting it back down or they're eating it up if there's too much right , well , and that kind of plays into like .

It's like there are actually three layers in there and each of those layers all behave differently during the time of day , or if it's a five layers , okay , so I only know the three and the three that are important to me . So I I don't know what the other two five do , but they probably are important that I just don't pay attention to .

So throw down some great knowledge to us , paul . Uh , what are those five layers ? And kind of help you know , shine some light on us idiots here well it's , it's just the , the knowledge is fresh in my mind .

And then you've got F1 and F2 during the daytime , but at nighttime they become one .

They , they sort of like f1 kind of disappears and f2 kind of becomes primary during the evening hours and stuff like that , and or is it the reverse , I can't remember yeah , they just , they just become one they all become one , right .

So yeah , okay , yeah , okay , all right now , I'm with you , now okay but it's still , that's still , that's still four four layers , yeah , give or take for okay , but so really like in , like there was a really good book and I'll mention at the very end that that kind of threw down some .

You know , truth to me and some of this and making it make more sense is that you know you always like , you ever sit down with like a well-seasoned ham who just knows what's going on , and they're like , you know , they look at their watch , they look at their time and they're like , oh yeah , well , I can't be on these five bands or these four bands because

I know I'm just not going to get the , the dx , or I'm not going to get this . And then when the gray line moves , and you know , all of a sudden , you know we're getting closer to darkness . You know , all of a sudden , they're like moving to 20 and you know they're moving to 40 and they're moving to the .

You know the lower bands and and you know making major , you know great contacts in those sense , like , have you kind of figured out that mystery ?

You know in the sense of when and where those kind of time shifts occur , and is it gray for you or is it just kind of like that's a definitive okay , I know , when A plus B equals C , this is the way it's going to play out .

Now in the , in the evening , that change happens a lot slower , where , you know you'll , you'll still get some of that D effect in in the gray line . So it's , it's all . It's all a matter of trying to figure out how far away you're trying to get , right , because that that makes a difference , right ? How ? How far away are you trying to get ?

And then figure out the frequency that's going to do the job . And that's where you want somewhere between the maximum usable frequency and the lowest usable frequency to get you to where you want to be .

The funny thing is , like in my mind and maybe this is kind of how you guys thought and Todd , you can chime in Like when I got on the radio , I'm like I just want to make contacts , I'd like I I'm not thinking like you know where am I going to , because I know my RF just kind of goes everywhere in most cases unless I've got a beam .

And you know , and I know you know , so you know from everybody telling me that you know , hey , if you get an NFED , the you know , the biggest bulbs of RF are going off the ends , you know , and they're just going everywhere . And so you're kind of thinking it's like well , it's not sort of directional , so you're just thinking I'm just spraying and praying .

And so I always grew up with the idea that , like you know , hey , some , as you're kind of explaining there , paul , a little bit of science , is that kind of how you felt , todd , when you started to kind of play with HF .

at dusk or even a little bit before dusk , as the sun's going down it'll start to pick up . So , like if I was going to do a late shift , I might jump in on a 40 right off the bat , because it's going to start coming in and I I'm going to hope that it just gets better and better as the night goes on , which it typically does .

I've also noticed , like you know , 10 meters . Like when we did our rove , we did 10 meters all day until we got to maine and , right , it was starting to get late , it was like five o'clock and it just kind of died and we had to switch to 20 because we just weren't getting anyone .

But the whole day we were just nailing 10 meters , like it was like ridiculous , it was a beeline to to Europe .

But when we finally got what time was it Like four or five o'clock , yeah , I think when we finally got to Maine and yeah , it just kind of wasn't working anymore , so we just switched to 20 , but I think we could have also switched to 40 , because that was around the time 17 .

It's like I'm not doing ham radio today , but it has been for the last month and a half , two months . It always says during the day , you know 20 , 40 , during it , poor , poor , poor . And then in the evening it says good .

So okay , it seems like the evening bands the forties , the eighties are better than the day bands of like the twenties , the seventeens , fifteens . So that's just what I've been seeing .

But I don't always go by the app , because I've seen the app where it says 20 has been poor and I've made 40 contacts in an hour doing a park , you know , in the middle of the day .

Everything that you've kind of said so far is everything that I kind of gathered out of the book that I'm reading and I'm rereading and rereading over and over again , and I'll mention it a little bit . But ultimately it talks very much about , like you know , that whole process of like , oh , where do you want to go ?

And that's , you know , that's the old adage . It's like , oh , you don't plan a trip and just say I'm just going to go that way and not , like you know , come up with more of a definitive plan .

But one of the things that you brought up was you know the antenna right , and the antenna plays such a big part in the propagation because typically , the higher your antenna is , the lower your takeoff angle will be , and so it'll give you a much longer trajectory when you're reflecting off the ionosphere and coming back down uh , whereas if your antenna is lower ,

it's going to have a higher takeoff anger . It's going to be shorter , right , uh , the difference between envis and and uh , you know a regular dipole up half a wavelength um .

But you also got to take into account , like a lot of times , we're using portable antennas that are using ground wave , you know , so we're we're not using sky wave at all , like our , our chances of bouncing signals up . That's not going to happen for us . That's not . Those aren't the antennas we're using . Um .

dirt expert , I mean obviously understanding the basics of soil and the purpose , like as paul alluded to . I mean , obviously , when , uh , todd and I were doing our seven park row , we were on the beaches .

I mean there was no , there was literally just salt , water and sand and nothing interfering with that , whereas , like you get , say , like in the granite state , we're a big giant rock , for God's sake . I mean , half of the state's pretty much all granite , you know , with a little bit of dirt around it .

So those play into a lot of factors when it comes to you know where and how you set up your antenna , what type of antenna you're running and a whole bunch of other things .

Even before you kind of get into what the Anasphere kind of looks like , it's more like okay , well , what am I playing with now today and how am I setting up and where am I setting up is going to build in all of those factors to making a better decision as to whether or not you're going to radiate towards Europe or radiate towards the South or just be a

giant RF bubble going up and going nowhere . You know it's all of those kinds of areas . So so I'm this is all awesome stuff and I'm sure probably a lot of folks are just like , wow , okay , we're shedding some light on some things here .

But I think when it comes to a lot of us hams like we , like our , some of us like our quick and dirty information , so , like Todd alluded to , like we have all of our apps out there that tell us like what's propagation kind of looking like .

Now , correct me if I'm wrong the way I understand those indices and what are created , it's almost like a , it's a best guess a lot of times because they don't have anything of future data . It's only at that moment in time or the data that they've used to accumulate to to that moment in time .

So , say , if I open up the app at 9 , 30 in the morning and I look that , that the propagation is going to be horrible for 20 and 40 , you know , during the daytime , but like in the afternoon , um , you know it's going to be okay . Well , there's no reason why to say the inverse doesn't happen with that . That like midday , all of a sudden .

You know , propagation for 20 , which was being reported at the time , was going to be crap . You might find that it might not be as bad . I mean , you know there , there are those moments . You guys ever run into similar scenarios like that .

You know , within an hour , up to 60 , and the propagation app said it was poor . And I've had other times where it said it's been good and crap . So I use it as I use it as just like a guy .

I mean I I'm guessing that those apps and the people that are doing that and reading the weather , it's like the weatherman , right , like the weatherman said yesterday that it was going to rain and it didn't . Yeah , it was nice day yesterday . I was like where's all this rain we're supposed to get ?

And then today , you know they said it was , it was gonna rain and it rained . So they're just off by a half a day or whatever so I mean I I don't know . I yeah , six hours , that's , that's a quarter of a day , whatever .

But anyway , my point is is , like you know , it's not a exact science , so you just kind of use it , but it doesn't prevent me from going out there .

I mean , like , what's going to prevent me more is like the physical weather , like , if it's pouring out like it was this morning , like , yeah , I'm not going out to do a park in the pouring rain unless I like , absolutely have to and there's some special reason like this is the only time I can do it .

But as for the solar you know weather , I'll take my chances . Yeah , how are you with that process ?

They beam different frequencies straight up and and they listen to the reflection . And these , these little devices all over the world , is what figures out the critical frequencies , what ? What is the frequency that just disappears into space , right , and what are the frequencies that come back ?

And that's how they guesstimate , right , the , the maximum usable frequencies and the lowest usable frequencies . You know , but there's way more science into this than I could ever comprehend .

I mean we've had times here it's like , oh , we're gonna get four feet of snow when we get like an inch , you know . Oh , we're just a couple inches and we're snowed in . I'm like how how can you be that far off ? And then they make the excuse like , oh , the shore shifted 20 miles . We weren't expecting . I mean it's getting better , but still so .

I'm not saying it's not scientific , but there's not . Like you know , the scientists and the science says , okay , today , on this day , this is going to be perfect , frequency for 20 , perfect timing . Band's going to be awesome for 20 meters . It's , it's .

It fluctuates and it's really hard to pinpoint exactly how , how the bands are going to be based on what the solar flares or spots , or the science behind it . I think they can give us a general idea . But , like you said , we've had times when they've all been saying it's been poor and I go out there and physically do it and it's great .

I mean , obviously , when you don't pay attention or you try to say I'm going to just buck the system and just go do it anyway , there's nothing wrong with that and you know it , it in my mind , I think , provides a good challenge for folks to say , hey , I'm going to go out and play , and so I know , I , I did a video on it and I'm very like you know

firsthand experience . I learned the hard way of like that . Exactly that same moment , bad conditions , everything like you just described , paul , is like all ground wave .

I was getting people literally that were like I could have got on a repeater , that like that close , like less than 30 miles away , kind of ordeal , and but like the , the time frames in between contacts , all of that stuff was just it was a a long , like you know , long slog and so , yeah , it plays in any which way .

I mean that might be like what you alluded to before is that you know , the best intent is obviously what you put up , but at the same time , bring a couple of different ones , because a vertical might be a little bit better for that scenario , versus like a wire antenna or whatever .

And you know I haven't had a chance and , uh , you know I I don't , I haven't had a chance to play with that .

You know that variable yet and I think I should , because it would help at least solidify with me as , like you know , okay , how do you deal with those conditions and those situations where the bands are crap , um , and you hear everybody complaining don't go out and play , you know .

Don't go play radio and go try two different antennas and see what you get , um , to see , you know how one performs over another and you know , go from there . I mean , have you guys any , any of you guys have done any of that at all ?

So I think that's going to be kind of something I'm going to be looking forward to , to seeing how , how that makes what , what that difference is like .

But if , uh , if , if the sky wave is is no good right and I'm not hearing anything , that really high noise floor , whatever , I could go out to the park and I could put up you know any number of antennas that are , you know , going to use ground wave propagation and I'd have a successful activation and have a ton of fun because it's , it's taking out the

atmospheric noise , it's , you know , it's , it's listening lower noise it's .

You know exactly your lawyer , knows lawyer , north floor , lower noise floor and you know you might be hearing some of those contacts that you weren't hearing wherever you're currently at and the conditions like you already described before , like soil conditions can be different . You know all of those factors can help improve .

You know your , your , your ears will say to be able to get out and hear . You know and that's kind of been my experience , I think , when you know I see 36 POTA , you know stations on and you know I know one or two of them have been on there for like three and a half hours .

You know they may be doing way better than I am at that moment , no matter .

You know what the time frame is or you know all of the other factors we talked about , um , and you know they may be using a better antenna like you described , you know , and to their benefit , are making better contacts because you know it's the antenna that's performing better in those conditions , right , agree ?

So , in terms of , like you know any mysteries , obviously , when you are going through your head analysis and going to do a POTA , as an example , what kind of your strategy ? When you look at some of those , the data , do you have a kind of a strategy ?

Is it more of a knee-jerk reaction or do you really kind of dive into the tools at the nth level and spend a good time , you know , analyzing what you see to then decide what you're going to go out and do ?

So when I uh , when I plan a park right , when it's not a spontaneous thing when I plan one , uh , I , I will , I watch , I'll watch the space weather , I'll , uh , I'll look at the propagation reports and and then , when it comes down to it , it all doesn't matter Because I'm going anyway , it doesn't matter .

So it sounds like , basically , we just throw the baby out with the bathwater with this process , which I'm all for because that's job , and if I'm like , okay , I got an hour , I'm gonna find a park , I'm not like , let's pull over the side of the highway and do the sfi index and you know , to confirm all of my , my feeling , my gut feelings , and go from

there . So , yeah , that I think you know that is good .

I mean , look , you go out there and you see nothing on a waterfall and you hear nothing , then you obviously band's dead try another band check to see if your antenna's plugged in .

Yeah , willful or record , or any of you can change them to . You know whatever band you want , it doesn't take that long of a time to do it and , um , it gives you the opportunity to kind of mess around , like if you have a you know a dipole or a wire in a tree , you know you might have my go-to band .

Like if I'm in an emergency , like , oh , we should start with something different . Like when I'm alone , I'll start with a , I'll try 10 . If 10 is dead , I might go up to 15 , and then I'm still not getting much .

Then I go to 20 and then , boom , you activate the park and you know , then you mess around and maybe you go back down and see what you can get . Or sometimes , if I don't have enough time , I'll start with 20 . And if I activate the park , I'll I'll quickly switch it down to 10 or 15 to see if I can get them .

So for me , I'm like you , paul , if I'm , if I'm going out to do a park , it really doesn't matter , I'm doing it anyway and my parks that I've attempted . So , uh , I did have one . Yeah , I did have one though in in Connecticut that uh , I think it was Connecticut .

It's either Connecticut or Rhode Island that I was there for like two and a half hours trying to make 10 contacts . It was tough . I was like I am just not leaving . I'm at like eight . I'm like I need two more .

Um , you know , just you , you just got to figure it out .

But the funny thing , when I took my technician test , when I grazed over that , I was like I'll never need to know that . And then when I finally got into really HF and started playing around , I went why are all these like ?

You look at , like I have a geocron and my geocron has a nice overlay of like all the muff and luff numbers and it's like what are those numbers mean ? Oh , those have a benefit .

Those are actually like numbers I should pay attention to because they tell me that's the best opportunity I can have for targeting that area , based off of where I currently located and you know how much power I can put behind it and what antennas .

So those those factors , and we could spend hours getting into this and I don't think we want to be a four-hour podcast show here .

But if you want to learn about those factors and understand , especially if you're in your home shack , where I think it'd be beneficial , because I found that if I paid attention to those numbers and the modes I was going to be operating in , if I found that the maximum usable frequency at the time that number in that area modes I was going to be operating in ,

if I found that the maximal usable frequency at the time that number in that area say , I was targeting Europe and I was looking for contacts in the Europe area that number and the bands that kind of follow with it kind of tell you pretty clearly like , oh , the maximum usable frequency is 20 meters in this area .

So you have the best advantage to target your , you know your contacts for that area . And when that kind of happened for me , I was like light bulb and I was like , oh my gosh , like that makes sense . That's simple .

I can understand that relationship and make that you know sense of it , instead of trying to say , well , if the K index is six and the SFI index overall is like 207,643 . Like , what does that give me for an advantage ? It's like you're kind of like oh well , that's . It's like you know baseball scores .

Sometimes when you just look at them you just get drowned in . You know the stats all the time . You just never really understand like what you're really looking at at the very end , you know end , and not making heads or tails out of it . Have you guys any dived into a little bit of the Muffin Luff stuff at all ?

That I've learned from , and Paul and Todd as well , that you know . We obviously mentioned solar flares and sunspots and Todd already said solar flare , bad sunspot . Good , you know . So I think- .

You know where you kind of dove into to learn a little bit about this and we'll make sure there's show notes and you can kind of explain them . I'll give you the floor , paul , since you've got a couple already .

It's called the fast track to understanding ham radio propagation by michael burnett and his call signs alpha frank , seven kilo , bravo , um , really good book .

Writes it in very plain , simple english so you can understand and it really kind of opened my eyes a little bit to understanding really the whole k and a and and really how it plays into you know the muff and luff and and then he dives into a lot of some of the history in the back of , like how , how do they do all that stuff ?

And I know paul uh touched upon some of those transmitters and stuff like that and um and hertz and all of his uh in in , um , uh , what is it ? Uh , all of his uh inventions and stuff like that that he did to be able to build all of that in place that we use today .

So that's always good to learn that stuff and and I always reference it , but um , the other , um , the other tool that I finding I'm getting a lot more benefit out of it I don't know if you guys are at the same time is Whisper .

If we use FT8 and FT8 mode , I do Whisper tests , probably like once a month or so with my antennas here in the shack , and basically I just set it overnight and I let it run on a couple of different bands just to get an idea of what it comes back for data .

Who sees me , what the Whisper net hears , who sees me what the the whisper net you know hears , and and how far I get out . I know it's just a snapshot in time , but it's .

It's probably a good snapshot from where I'm currently sitting and residing in in my shack and , and so if you ever want to kind of see how your antenna stacks up or just you know how far you're getting out .

I mean , whisper tests are definitely a good thing to test your equipment and how they work against and your antennas work against propagation at that kind of period of time , and so that's always a good tool there as well .

Don't let bad reports discourage you from getting out yep , well put , well put .

say , being on the coastline versus being , you know , very much , nestled in a , you know a hilly area and , uh , you know very granite , you know kind of rocky soil , um , or you know , like arizona , where it's just dry desert , you know , kind of all of those factors all play into what you can hear and what you can you know , basically , um , get your , your ,

your , the most rf out of your antenna up into the , the air , and then it's kind of not so much luck , well , it's sort of luck we don't have any control . Once it goes off the antenna it can go anywhere .

There are days that I've heard stories where the bands have been horrible and all of a sudden they get this e-skip or they swing their beam the opposite direction , point it towards Alaska , and they're talking to Japan or they're talking to japan , or they're talking to , um , you know , uh , say uh , russia or france , because just the way the propagation works ,

they're able to get up in those upper layers and just bounce their signal and and kind of do this like wizardry magic that we all wish we could do , like at a moment's notice , which we all know that we can't .

We've got a conversation kind of going over . I created a channel over on our Discord so if you haven't been part of our Discord , you head over to our show notes , the links in the show notes and they're on our website and you can join in and be part of the Propagation Discord channel that we have . And let's learn from each other .

In essence , that's the best thing we can suggest , and feel free to share your experiences or lack of experiences and ask questions . You know , let's keep the conversation going there and have a good you know good laugh at each other , as we all make mistakes we do when we're trying to learn propagation .

So , all right , well , with that , as always , we thank you guys for joining the live , free and ham podcast community . As always , if you haven't subscribed , we always ask the question what are you doing ? You know , come on , you know , at this point uh , you know we've already been here a year we're not going away anywhere anytime soon .

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