Magnetospherically ducted echoes in the San Francisco area

On 7. November 2015, several radio amateurs in northern California heard echoes in the 80 meter band. I was made aware of it by Jack, W6FB in Santa Clara, who recorded signals from K6YT some 25 miles away. According to W6FB, the echo effect was also heard north of Sonoma (several hundred miles north of him, reported by N6ZFO).

KM6I, Gordon, in Palo Alto also heard echoes of his own signals and recorded them. In his blog he analyzed the delay from the output of his transceiver and found 157 ms. He found that to be so close to the round-the-world time for signals of 138 ms, that he assumed that to be the cause.

I don't agree, so I took the location of W6FB at locator CM97ah (Santa Clara) as a starting point for computing delay. This is latitude 37.31 and longitude -121.96 and gives a geomagnetic latitude of about 42.5 degrees. Then I put it into my program for computing path length along geomagnetic field lines assuming a height of the reflecting ionosphere on the opposite side of 100 km. The result is shown in the figure and predicts a delay time of 126 ms. My estimate of uncertainty is +/-5 ms.

The delay value is slightly less than 138 ms and easy to confuse with a round-the-world path. The challenge with estimating delays like this from the signal is that amateur transceivers may have an unspecified delay between start of transmission and start of sidetone. Measuring on the audio output as done here, measures the sidetone, not the actual RF.

I discussed this source of error in my 2009 QST article "Magnetospheric ducting as an explanation for delayed 3.5 MHz signals." Therefore the measurement shown above may fit with 138 ms just as well as with 126 ms, it depends on the actual transceiver's delay.

Other properties of the echo, such as the amplitude of the echo which according to W6FB at times was louder than the direct signal, also point to the duct theory as the explanation.

Others have heard such echoes also:

• 165-168 ms, K4MOG, February 2006, 80 m. Listen to the signal here. This event is also the object of the analysis in my QST article referenced above.
  
• 210-220 ms, G3PLX, November 2006, 160 m. Listen to the signal here.
• 214-219 ms, W2PA, February 2008, 80 m.
  
• 237 ms, OZ4UN, January 2009, 80m, Listen to audio file where also OZ7BQ very close by heard the echoes.
• About 200 ms, G3ZRJ, January 2012, 80m. Also heard by GW3OQK, 100 km apart.

Other posts on the theme: Magnetospherically Ducted Echoes or Medium Delayed Echoes

Medium delayed echoes

Medium Delayed Echoes or Magnetospherically Ducted Echoes (both MDE) are radio echoes delayed from 0.14-0.3 seconds. They represent a subset of Long Delayed Echoes (LDE) and is the only one of the five LDE effects discussed in "The Five Most Likely Explanations for Long Delayed Echoes" which is fairly well understood.

Here is a fascinating report of such echoes from G3ZRJ. His report is different from those of many others in two unique and very interesting ways.

Unusual HF Propagation Phenomena

Earthrise from Apollo 8 (NASA)

My blog has just been updated by migrating posts from my old web site containing a collection of audio samples from unusual HF propagation phenomena. They range from round-the-world propagation (delay 138 ms) to ducted transmission in the magnetosphere (delay ~140-300 ms) ending with moonbounced 7 MHz signals (delay 2.39 sec).

The posts are:

• Magnetospherically ducted echo
• Three paths from Japan to Norway along the grayline
• Propagation via aurora reflection
• Polar flutter
• Moonbounced echoes on 6792.5 and 7407.5 kHz

Magnetospherically ducted echo

Magnetic field lines in the
magnetosphere (Ill. NASA)

Signals in the 1.8 - 4 MHz range may pass the ionosphere and be ducted in the magnetosphere out to a distance of several earth radii over to the opposite hemisphere where they will be reflected on top of the ionosphere.

The round-trip time varies with the latitude of the transmitter, or to be more accurate with the position relative to the magnetic Equator. Typical delay times are 140 - 300 ms. At my location near Oslo, Norway, the expected delay is about 308 ms, but unfortunately I have yet to hear such an echo.