--On Tuesday, July 23, 2002 10:11 PM -0700 Andy Ellifson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> **** ( CORRECTED ) MAJOR SUNSPOT ACTITVITY **** I passed this on to a neighbor for comment wrt 802.11b. His response appears below: > These blackouts generally affect communications in the HF (high frequency) > range. This means that frequencies below about 30-40Mhz will be affected. > The reason is that the F layers of the ionosphere are used to "skip" > signals for long distance communications. The solar storms cause massive > disturbances in the ionosphere which cause this "skip" effect to shut > down. It is actually impressive to listen to by virtue of the total > absence of normal noise, or any other signal, on these bands of > frequencies. These frequencies are used, on occasion, for extremely low > speed commercial/military digital communications (110 baud). > > This should have no effect on us. The R3 classification will shut down HF > radio communications for a bit, but the G2 geomagnetic classification is > not too bad and should not affect the power grids. Severe geomagnetic > storms can shift the magnetic poles by many degrees. > > There are many places to get more information about sunspots. Being an > amateur radio operator who likes HF communications, I have a bit of an > interest in the topic. > > The most succinct monitoring and information site I have found is run by a > group of short wave listeners in the Netherlands: > http://www.dxlc.com/solar/ > > Many of the measurements used are taken in Boulder (Boulder K index). Nasa > usually has some great photos of the big CMEs/Flares
