On Jan 26, 6:52*pm, bpnjensen wrote:
...but I cannot put my finger on what it is. *The radio is alive with
signals this evening where yesterday it was zilch, and the background
AND RFI is all much quieter and easier to tame than usual. *60 meters
is hopping with stations, almost as good as the best times of the last
solar cycle, especially Asia and a few Africans (R. Tajikistan on 4765
kHz and CV Voice International on the Zambia relay on 4965 in English
were both pretty nice). *For the past several days the bands have been
dead and noise has been obnoxious. *I checked the indices and solar
flux - A = 2, K = 0, SF = 80, so not unusual for the last week or so.

All I can figure is that, with the rains that we have gotten here in
California, the ground has finally gotten wet enough to give a good
ground again.

Anyway, I think ground matters! *Keep that soil well watered!

Bruce Jensen

If you had a Wellbrook loop, then the ground doesn't matter. Well, I
think. I have noticed the radio propagation programs like SPLAT have
hooks for ground conductivity, though I never experimented with them.

I've noticed in the desert, they run significant counterpoise for
NDBs, so water does have some effect. You can see the counterpoise
from Google Earth. Now I don't know of any desert shortwave stations
to view, but it would be interesting to see what a Middle East site
looks like.