Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio If you've been around radio amateurs for a little while you're likely to have heard about the Solar Cycle and that it affects radio propagation for HF or High Frequency, also known as shortwave communications. The frequencies in the range of around 3 to 30 MHz, or 100m to 10m wavelength. One of the main ways it's used is for is for long distance or global communication and one of the most common ways that's done is using the ionosphere around the globe to refract a radio signal. In September 2020, the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel, announced that Solar Cycle 25 had commenced in December 2019 and radio amateurs around the globe rejoiced. The first question for me was, why Solar Cycle 25? You might think of the Sun as a stable light in the sky. As it happens, the bright light hides all manner of ferocious activity. One of the measures of this activity is the number of dots observed on the surface of our Star. These dots are called sunspots. As Solar activity increases, the num