Following the thunderstorm epic drama focus returns to the original purpose of these notes – Propagation over the North Sea.
With the storm cell location still firmly established across the southern North Sea the noise level on 3cm has increased by about 1dB (-128dBm/2.7kHz compared to -129dBm/2.7kHz normally).
With the dish pointing directly to PI7ALK a band scan shows good readable signals from PE9GHZ, GB3SEE, PI7RTD and PI7ALK. ON0GHZ is lightly weaker than the rest.
As there is heavy rain it is likely all these signals are arriving via rain scatter rather than the anticipated lower level scatter and ducting modes.
Evaporation ducting is not expected to be noticeable today as the latest information on North Sea sea state indicates wave heights of at least 1.5m away from the coastal boundaries. As noted before anything abouve 1m reduces the strength of signals from the evaporation duct and calculation have shown that the duct breaks up with wave height of 1.6m or higher. We are close to that limit today.
It looks very much as if weather effects will dominate today
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