Satgen 556  Auroras 80  Meteors 0  by GM4IHJ (BID SGEN556) 1999-11-19

The much anticipated 1999 Leonids Meteor Shower's 33 year, peak has
come and gone, with little more than a whisper. Leonid 99s in Scotland
were not as good as Leonids 98 , when a shower of larger than average
particles unexpectedly lightened the November 98 sky. Which perhaps
simply affirms the fact that we do not know very much about predicting
meteor shower intensities. 0220z 18th November 99 did produce a number
of bright meteors, which GM4IHJ did not see visually  because of
cloud. Although stations further east had a good view of the activity,
albeit through broken cloud.

All of which nearly obscured the fact that on both 17th and 18th of
November 99 , there were excellent auroras north of Scotland. Indeed ,
so far in 1999 there have been 80 days when aurora was present near
Scotland. Looking back at records suggests that this high number of
auroral days is a new feature, well above the 50 average of previous
years. Some of this increase may be due to improvements in detection
techniques and equipment. But some could well be due to the level of
solar activity this year.

Up until a few weeks ago , while solar flux levels had not been
particularly high , there had been rather more coronal hole events
than usual. So while there were more weak auroras, there was not much
really good solar cycle maximum DX. But recently this has changed,
with solar flux surging suddenly up to the levels experienced at the
peak of the previous solar cycle to this one. Whether this increase
will be sustained is not clear but it has already resulted in good 6m
paths from Northern Europe to Japan. 

On the satellite front however there are clear signs that sudden
changes at solar flux level are not always useful. RS13 is providing
29.458 Mhz signals from its beacon into Northern Europe from all over
the world. But while the beacon is being heard, it is loud but not
clear, and, adjacent communications signals are totally unreadable
most of the time. The problem may be associated with this rise in
polar auroral activity, because the signals most desired, coming from
the southern hemisphere ( VK, ZL etc), are quite unreadable at
present, even at the slowest rate CW.

Hopefully this may change as we get closer to actual solar cycle peak
. Indeed conditions were not this bad in previous cycle peaks, so
there is hope. But presently signals from the satellite when it is
south of, but near VK and ZL, are showing a most peculiar doppler
pattern on the FFTDSP display. Whereby the signal which should be
dopplering slowly at about 20 Hz/minute average, is instead dopplering
300 Hz per minute for 1 minute then jumping back to roughly where it
started and performing a succession of these 300Hz glissades , each
followed by, an instant abrupt jump back, of 300 Hz. 

>From the point of view of the student of propagation this doppler
dance presents an intriguing problem. But from the would be satellite
DXers point of view, it is a disaster.