Project Pursues Mysteries of Sporadic E-Skip
/Loyd Van Horn, W4LVH, is a fan of mysteries, and there are perhaps few ham radio mysteries greater than that of Sporadic E-skip, which makes its appearance on VHF in the Northern Hemisphere every year at about this time.
Loyd is the force behind DX Central, a resource for DXers that does, among many things, data analysis. This month, he unveiled SEDAP, an acronym for his Sporadic Es Data Analysis Project. It can be found at fmdxdata.com and is free to use by hams, educators and anyone with a hobbyist's interest in this special season that turns propagation magical in the eyes of many.
He compiled more than 95,000 FM broadcast logs from North America to get the data relevant for the project, which goes beyond simple spreadsheets by adding interactive visualisations.
“SEDAP allows us to physically watch ionospheric clouds spawn, compress and track across the continent in real-time. We can finally see what a typical season looks like on a macroscopic level.”
Loyd Van Horn also plans to include amateur radio data from 6 metres. He said that will permit analysis of days that had no propagation alongside days with active openings - days on which the maximum usable frequency did not reach the FM broadcast band.
