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[SV9DRU]

Greetings to all,

It has been at least 10-15 years that propagation goes from bad to worse here in Europe.

Above 20m the bands are practically dead beyond a sporadic opening.

20m is "anemic" with signals even from Italy, Russia and Germany which used to be extremely strong in the past solar cycles, barely registering above S5 most of the time.

40m are even worse, with few DX openings at night, and very precarious short - intermediate distance conditions, while the huge broadcast signals above 7,2 Mhz are at least 30db lower during the night than what they used to be in the late 90s and until 2010-13.

80m and 160m more or less same as 40m. Limited short - intermediate propagation, rare to non existent DX openings.

The gradual and consistent declining over so many years, do not conform to the usual expected sunspot related patterns. The conditions are also erratic, changing abruptly in a matter of seconds between solid copy of a station and no copy, something that was never observed before.

When a band was open, of course there was QSB, but overall conditions used to remain relatively stable and predictable for hours at a time instead of minutes or seconds !

Finally a pattern of unexpected "local" propagation shifting is observed in 20m, where a DX station 3.000 km away may have strong 5-9 signal in one location while being practically uncopyable just a few km away.

Having wittnesed the ever escalating pattern of stratospheric aerosol spraying over the last 10-15 years, I wonder if all these strange HF propagation patterns are not only related to the worldwide "Geoengineering" but in addition veryfy the conductive nature of the sprayed materials.
Any thoughts or feedback are welcome.

73,
Marinos, sv9dru / ki4gin

[N8AUC]

Well, here in the US, some people refer to this "stratospheric aerosol spraying" as "chem trails". I've never seen any evidence of that, so I find myself unable to put much credence in such beliefs or theories.

Besides, if someone really does do such things, it would have to be done very secretly. If they were doing it with commercial flights, some gold digger looking for a book or movie deal would have said something and violated the secrecy. Even if it was being done by the military, it seems to me that even they have trouble keeping secrets these days. The penalty for violating security classification is usually long term imprisonment, or even death by execution. Since we haven't seen an sudden increase in the death rate for aircraft mechanics, it's probably not a real thing. Besides, a secret is only a secret when only two people know it, and one of them is dead. Far too many people would have to be in on the secret for it to be kept secret for very long.

What I have seen, is condensation trails (con trails) left by high flying jet aircraft, usually commercial flights. Even piston powered aircraft flying high enough can leave con trails. That is a normal phenomenon of hot, moisture laden engine exhaust gas hitting the cold, dry upper atmosphere, which creates a trail of ice crystals. This only seems to happen under certain weather conditions. On some days, depending on the strength of the upper level winds, those con trails can persist for a while. And as multiple aircraft cross a certain area you can see where they all went due to that persistence. I can certainly see where that could easily be mistaken for some planned activity.

No, I suspect what you're seeing is the random fluctuations of atmospheric ionization being caused by variations in solar flux as we enter the upswing of cycle 25. Solar flux plotted versus time is not a linear function, or a smooth curve. It has lots of peaks and dips. During the peaks, HF propagation appears to improve, and on dips is appears to get worse.

Having operated Field Day last weekend, I saw similar variations in propagation. On Saturday, 20 meters and above were really poor, and 40 and 80 meters were where you had to be to make any contacts at all it seemed. But Sunday morning, 20 opened up pretty well, and I even heard signals on 10 and 15 meters. As I recall, last year at Field Day conditions behaved in a similar manner. This should gradually improve as we move farther and farther into cycle 25.

73 de N8AUC
Eric

[N0YXB]

Having wittnesed the ever escalating pattern of stratospheric aerosol spraying over the last 10-15 years, I wonder if all these strange HF propagation patterns are not only related to the worldwide "Geoengineering" but in addition veryfy the conductive nature of the sprayed materials.
Any thoughts or feedback are welcome.

You may want to talk to the guy who "witnessed" long delayed radio broadcasts. You two might have a bit in common.

[SV9DRU]

Hi Eric,

Unfortunately, for anyone remembering the appearance of real contrails in the 80s and early 90s which used to dissipate quickly as they are supposed to, the difference with chemtrails is quite obvious.
They remain and spread, resulting in a hazy sky, which if you observe it from a high point even assumes a yellow hue, something that can not happen for normal moisture contensation.
Other times one can notice the coexistence of chemtrail with contrail produced by different plains flying at similar altitudes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPnWaBsMYnY

Several semi-official reports also confirm their global existence, and I believe the unexpected propagation behavior may be related.

Marinos

[SWMAN]

 I would not put it past our government to do this and not tell anyone about it. I do not trust much of anything they do and say nowadays. To bad for us all . God Bless America.

[KC6RWI]

To really answer the question the "dx is not like I remember from way back."
I remember hearing signals like they where next door or down the street.
Now I get alot of echo sounding signals or weak to moderate signals. its just different.
I also wonder if the noise floor has changed, of course, it must have.

[N8AUC]

To really answer the question the "dx is not like I remember from way back."
I remember hearing signals like they where next door or down the street.
Now I get alot of echo sounding signals or weak to moderate signals. its just different.
I also wonder if the noise floor has changed, of course, it must have.

Oh, the noise floor has definitely gone way up over the last 30 years.
The proliferation of cheap, noisy, switching power supplies is probably to blame for that.

[N8NK]

I generally agree, shortwave bands are much different than back in the day. But memory is selective: hams who've been around the cycle a few times will of course remember the wild times. And every cycle has wild times. I've worked southern Argentina with 2.5 milliwatts with a real report of S7. Do I remember sitting at my desk a week before that copying nothing but band misery? Of course not.
I wonder what the heck effect on general propagation we're causing by lighting up the planet with GHz RF. WiFi. Cellular networks. You name it. If one were to take a picture of Earth from space like we've all seen (stunning btw) - but not in visible light, but GHz RF - we'd look like the surface of the sun.
Not only are we roasting our DNA, we're laying waste to radio propagation perhaps as well. Most certainly, we've upped the incidence of cancer. There will be those who argue this bioeffect of RF exposure in the GHz range, but I'm a retired biomedical engineer who's seen crazier sh** than you can possibly imagine. Be glad you can't.
Chuck

[N8AUC]

Several semi-official reports also confirm their global existence, and I believe the unexpected propagation behavior may be related.

Semi-official reports?

Wow. OK.

[SV9DRU]

Of course propagation tends to vary even within a certain period of a solar cycle, but it used to be largely predictable during the early phase (low sunspot) with conditions favoring the lower bands, below 20m while the higher remain "dead".
That lasted for the first few years, gradually changing towards the high sunspot period of the cycle, until the propagation went "wild" during the peak years with good DX openings even during the night in 15 or even 10m.

Now, according to the sunspot graph from here
 https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/solar-cycle/historical-solar-cycles.html

the solar activity during October - December of '96 was at a nadir, much lower than the activity in 2015. Nevertheless, and I personally remember that, during 2015 propagation was nowhere as good as it was in '96.

As to how "official" do we need a report to be before we believe it, chemical analysis of rain and snow, soil and surface waters as well as living systems, including human blood, goes beyond any report from any official sourse.
Scientific evidence stands by itself and does not have to be allowed into existence by any politician or other authority.

[KA2FIR]

"stratospheric aerosol spraying" AKA chemtrails are hidden in plain sight.

[WB8VLC]

You said>>the solar activity during October - December of '96 was at a nadir, much lower than the activity in 2015. Nevertheless, and I personally remember that, during 2015 propagation was nowhere as good as it was in '96.

For me I observed the opposite:
The 1995 to 1996 years were terrible for me while the years from 2013 to 2015 were the best years and close to the openings I observed in 1989.

As just one  example on 10 meter FM (29.6MHz)  I made several contacts over these years using a Motorola MT1000, 6 watt HT, with the stock 11.5 inch rubber duck to New Zealand (ZL2OK), Japan, (JL1TZQ RIP Yoshi) and Taiwan (BV2DQ).

And these were not one off QSO's either, I had several contacts with ZL2OK and JL1TZQ over these good years with this inefficient HT and stock antenna and also I added many US states and some Canadians to the log with the same HT.

1995-1996 were the absolute worst years for me for any type of activity on HF up to 6 meters going as far back as 1975 in my case.

[W1VT]

I consider myself lucky in that I live in a relatively quiet suburban neighborhood with a very deep back yard.
I've made fifty thousand contacts in the last decade and conditions now seem similar to previous solar minima.
I previously did a lot of HF operating between 1978 and 1992. 
Then I did a lot of VHF/UHF/Microwave operating while living in a cheap apartment for a decade.

I suspect many hams have issues with rising noise levels.

Zak W1VT

[SV9DRU]

During late '96 early 97, I had the opportunity to see the HF propagation both ftrom the SV9 land and W2 (western NY), where I spent the next 3 years, before moving to W6 (LA).

At that time, with simple horizotal loop @ 6m above ground, 80m and 40m were a "dream" compared to 2015 in Europe. Plenty of strong signals and long lasting predictable openings.
20m was fairly active for DX but VERY active for European stations until early night hours from SV9.

Then, in the second half of '97 could hear ZL in SSB 20m at NIGHT !! and had easy access to Eastern Europe (5/9 SSB signals) in 15m !! anywhere from 11:00AM to 16:00 EST from the W2 land.

By October '98 I see a few contacts in 10m !! with JA SSB

All this with a 30m sloper wire strung on a tall tree in the backyard of my appartment, tunned with the internal ATU of my FT-890 (Very nice little rig) and no more than 120W PEP.

This in stark contrast to the bands of the last decade. At this time, and for the last at least 2 years, I hear NO signals in the entire 20m band for most of the daytime. 40m the same, above 20m, I do not even bother to check. Populated a little less than the Sahara desert.
(SV land QTH)

YMMV