Thursday, October 14, 2010

ENOX23 IS ON - HN 12.-17.10.2010

12.-13.10.

After a 13 hour direct drive through blowing snow I arrived at ENOX on tuesday evening (12.10) at around 18 UTC, just to notice that the CME effects were still strongly on. Around 20 UTC the Canadians on 1230 started to come in, first CFFB and a moment later also CHFC. In addition to these, Greenland on 650. Even these with much variation in strength. Dead all night...

However, all of sudden in front of 5 UTC the MW band opened for some 20 minutes with the main emphasis on...Mexico ! The signals were still much affected by the CME with signals quickly coming in strong, only to disappear soon again. But lady luck was with me, as the strongest peaks in the signals centered exactly around the TOH. Since it was the midnight hour in most parts of Mexico, the Mexican National Anthem was heard all over. Some versions only lasted for 2 minutes or so, but the "norm" seems to be the 4-minute version. During that time some signals had time to fade in and out some 2-3 times. It was a gamble with identifications...,on 1080 the National Anthem was accompanied by what I believe to be a provincial one, postponing the "TOH" Id to 7 almost minutes past... Many interesting signals faded unfavorably, but having listened to all recordings from that period, I was still lucky to positively identify 23 stations around this signgle TOH , among them XETO-950, XETUL-1080, XEAU-1090 and XEYZ-1130, which all have not been previously logged in Finland.

In the afternoon, Hawaii and some Alaska started to fade in in front of 13 UTC and continued fairly past 14 UTC. Specifically the upper end was in good shape and KUAU-1570 came in particularily strong for over one hour.

14.10.

The evening of the 13th of October was dead. So was the night - at least on my recordings, which had encountered some unidentified problem and I had nothing on the hard disk. When I woke up, the going was quite good all over the NA continent, accompanied by some MEX. The remains of the CME effect were still there, with signals swinging back and fort. At one time the 297 degree antenna was best for the whole continent ! A coupple of stations identified "live" were WZOE-1490, WGNS-1450, KATE-1450, KIHH-1400, KWEI-1260, XERO-1240 and XESA-1260.

In general it has been somewhat interesting to have the CME-type of disturbance, where the effects of the CME cause dominant stations being cut out on many frequencies and the general recovery from the more significant effects taking place quite rapidly. The past years have been packed with all sorts of Coronal Hole effects, which are very different: even smaller effects seemed to make signals disappear and the lenght of the recovery often was painfully long. This is a lot more fun with "only moderately strong" CME´s !"

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