Amateur radio enthusiasts have been taking advantage of Sporadic-E skip or simply sporadic-e for many years. Sporadic-E is a poorly understood propagation method that takes advantage of ”clouds” of highly charged particles in the lower atmosphere. Using this method you can ”skip” a signal off the cloud and communicate over much longer distances than you normally could at VHF frequencies.
Late spring into summer is the time of year when sporadic-E really takes off in the northern hemisphere, but Sporadic-E can show up at any time and at any place making predictions very difficult. Really the best way to see if there is any chance of skip is to check the spotting networks or just get on the radio and give a holler and see who answers you just make sure to have your maidenhead grid square locator. Here’s a good link to one – https://www.levinecentral.com/ham/grid_square.php.
Well, apparently amateurs aren’t the only ones interested in predicting Sporadic-E.
I was listening to one of my podcasts (This Week in Amateur Radio for the record) at work today and thought I would pass on some interesting information. Apparently, The Air force Research Lab is also interested in tracking Sporadic-E clouds and in a way that we may not have expected. I won’t ruin the surprise here but this discovery sounds very interesting and has far-reaching effects.
You can read the whole article here.http://www.arrl.org/news/air-force-research-laboratory-tracks-sporadic-e.
73
-Jim K1BRM
