Polar flutter

Arctic areas

Here is a recording of JW/DJ3KR on Spitzbergen from 24. August 2007, at about 21:45 UTC. This was only a few minutes after I had contact with him on 7.002 MHz.

Notice the fluttery character of his signal. On this day it wasn’t too bad and it wasn’t too hard to copy his signal, but on other occasions, signals that travel over the polar zone may be impossible to copy correctly. The K-index in Tromsø, which lies between Oslo (60 deg. N) and Spitzbergen (78 deg. N), at the time was 0.

[Image source: regjeringen.no]