MONITORING RESEARCH - 6 MHZ SPECTRUM

 

MONITORING RESEARCH - 6 MHZ SPECTRUM

 

We are now three weeks into the B2016 Transmission Schedule Season and after an initial flurry of frequency adjustments, channel occupancies have generally stabilized.

 

Continuing low Solar Activity during the present Sunspot Cyclel 24 is a source of concern, marked by the 10.7 cm Solar Radio Flux having dropped to 77, and the Daily Equivalent Smoothed Sunspot Number down to 16.

 

That has resulted in unreliable propagation on frequencies above about 12 MHz over long-haul multi-hop paths following darkness or partial darkness routes, and this pattern is not expected to change significantly in the near future.

 

Here in Melbourne there has been much activity in our sunrise window, in the 6, 7, 9 and 11 MHz bands, mainly via shortpath (darkness)) from Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

 

On November 22 2016, this is what the 11 MHz spectrum looked like between 1730 and 1800, in our predawn window.

 

11670 INDIA English from *1745

11625 VATICAN VR-SMG English

11730 TURKEY English

11750 SRI LANKA SLBC-Trincomalee Sinhala

11760 GERMANY VOA-Lampertheim Kurdish

11775 ENGLAND IBRA-Woofferton Arabic

11800 EGYPT English

11860 S. ARABIA R. Sanna via Riyadh relay, Arabic

11930 USA R. Marti, Greenville, Spanish (long path)

11945 FRANCE NHK-Issoudin Japanese

11965 VATICAN VOA-SMG Oromo

12025 INDIA Malayalam

12090 THAILAND VOA-Udorn Oromo

12095 UAE BBC-Dhabbaya Arabic