Learning HF Propagation from Intl. CW Beacon Project

[HB9VQQ]

Happy New Year everyone. Just a quick note about a Project I recently kicked off. To better understand HF Prop I started a website which provides interactive dashboards based on data derived from the International Beacon Project (IBP) together with some Solar indices trying to draw smart conclusions over time. The project is still quite young but taking a slightly different approach by using Data Analytics tools versus the old fashioned way the IBP data was presented which did not provide deep inforamtion context and correlation.

If you are interested you are invited to take a look at the dashboard here Internatiol CW Beacon Monitor @HB9VQQ

73
Roland

 

[HB9VQQ]

Added Bz and Solar Wind Speed graph 

https://cutt.ly/ijshp8h

Edited January 4, 2021 by HB9VQQ

[Drax Spacex]

Interesting project - and useful to view the plots for the various data aligned consistently along the X-axis by date.  Are you using your own station to determine whether the beacons can be heard?  I would expect as solar activity continues to ramp up that MUF and the number of beacons heard will increase.  Are there any particular hypotheses you want to check using this data?  Or is this more of a project to collect the data and let the statistics determine the correlations?  73

[HB9VQQ]

Thanks for your comment. Yes I am using my own station to capture the beacon signals from Faros and parse them through some python scripts before uploading it to the InfluxDB. The process is fully automated. I was researching and could not find a similar database/visuals on this Topic with a long term data collection focus. Actually I started this for two purposes. 1 to learn data analytics and 2 to get a better understanding what the mechanics are behind HF Propagation, Solar activites and such. Hopefully this will eventually help to draw smart conclusions and maybe even forecast Propagation based on Machine Learning, not wanting to use the word artificial intelligence.....

But that's far away, this is just a beginning and I am curious to see where this is going to. Lots of ideas, this will always be a work in progress project. Hope you enjoy.

73 

[helios]

Hi Roland,

Interesting project and beautiful visualizations. I made a similar attempt some years ago, but discontinued it when I moved my QTH to a place where I couldn't do ham radio.

I noticed that you are measuring the SNR, instead of absolute field strength. Unless you live in a very radio-quiet location, isn't that a problem with varying noise floor?

Maybe you would like to have a glance at wsprdaemon. It is used to log the absolute noise spectral density on multiple bands simultaneously. Perhaps it could be modified to calibrate the IBP levels. (some example plots http://wsprdaemon.org/graphs/index.html )

73

[HB9VQQ]

Hello and thanks for your input, glad you like it. The SNR measurements are valid for my location only and cannot be copy/pasted all over the globe for many reasons not just noise floor. My Data is based on CW Beacons from permanently and stationary installed standardized Beacon transmitters, with stndard output levels, scheduled transmissions on omni directional antennas thanks to the NCDXF Beacon project.  There is no such thing yet with WSPR, but it would certainly close the gap for modes below -5 dB SNR. Faros can copy CW Signals down to ~-5dB. That is good to judge HF propagation for certain modes like CW, SSB but does not help with weak signal digi modes.

If you monitor signals over a long period of time it is important to have at least some degree of standardisation. Only this makes it comparable over time. Further correlating the Beacon Data with actionable context is the second part of the story. Bringing context into data is key, that's far more than just collecting SNR on a graph.

Here is an example. if you look at this you could have anticipated going from KP0 to KP4 today

https://postimg.cc/JsvfZWf5

Furthermore this explains why I only heard 8 beacons today, so stitching the data together slwowly makes sense and allows you to better understand what's going on

https://postimg.cc/WqpNCvbJ

https://postimg.cc/Hj06d7Tg

73

Edited January 5, 2021 by HB9VQQ

[Drax Spacex]

1 hour ago, HB9VQQ said:

Here is an example. if you look at this you could have anticipated going from KP0 to KP4 today

The soft machine in my head might hypothesize that an increase in the standard deviation of the solar wind may presage an increase in Kp index.

[HB9VQQ]

Yes Bz going south and elevated Wind speed most likely leads to disturbances in the earths magnetic field which usually degrades HF prop. This was just a mild bump after all, but definetely had an impact. Blue curve going up, red going southwards good for Aurora lovers but not good for HF Prop generally speaking.

Edited January 5, 2021 by HB9VQQ

[HB9VQQ]

Just a quick heads-up. I have kicked-off a global WSPR Beacon Project https://github.com/HB9VQQ/WSPRBeacon
You can follow along on Twitter if you like https://twitter.com/IntlWspr

 

And this is the map of the candidates so far https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edit?mid=14X0GJ4vSQ7D8piZfuHDs902Y9tINuPqB&usp=sharing

 

[Drax Spacex]

I noticed a few weeks ago during the S1 radiation storm that shortwave radio propagation was enhanced.  Are you maintaining solar proton flux in your dataset and correlating it to propagation?  If not, it might be a good statistic to include.

73

[HB9VQQ]

Yes 

[hamateur 1953]

That is a great idea if you have the spare time! bravo! Mike 

[HB9VQQ]

30 WSPR Beacons up and running 24x7x365 all Beacons transmitting on 80,40,20,15 and 10m with 200 mW

 

https://wspr.live/gui/d/mgTznmeMz/beacon-stations?orgId=1&refresh=5m