Cable Forum - View Single Post - Fears of disruption as big solar storm set to hit Earth

Kymmy · 08-03-2012, 12:45

Sunspots/solar flares react with the different layers in the ionosphere causing them to bounce back radio waves (different layers bounce back radio waves at different frequencies) Which means that instead of line of site for some frequencies they go up and bounce back down and then sometimes bounce back up and down again. Which means that instead of for example 60+ miles on average for VHF you can all of a sudden get 1000+ miles.

So what's bad for standard comms can be great for amateur radio

08-03-2012, 12:45	#4
Kymmy Inactive Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 18,385	Re: Fears of disruption as big solar storm set to hit Earth Sunspots/solar flares react with the different layers in the ionosphere causing them to bounce back radio waves (different layers bounce back radio waves at different frequencies) Which means that instead of line of site for some frequencies they go up and bounce back down and then sometimes bounce back up and down again. Which means that instead of for example 60+ miles on average for VHF you can all of a sudden get 1000+ miles. So what's bad for standard comms can be great for amateur radio