Morning all

Have had a few spare hours this weekend so have been performing some HF Radio experiments, mostly looking at time of day propagation however this lead me into thinking... How would the FE guys explain what i'm seeing here. In the RE model its pretty straight forward.

So to set the picture, 7.074mhz is the frequency in use, using a mode called FT8. What FT8 is, in a nutshell, is a Data mode where radio transceivers controlled by PC's (doesnt need to be connected to the internet) exchange information back and forth, signal strength, location, etc. This can then be seen using a website called PSK Reporter (https://pskreporter.info).

So anyway, the question. At the moment, the HF "bands" are pretty flat, meaning comms are difficult due to the sun spot cycle. We are at flat bottom at the moment, causing Ionospheric "lulls" (Can read about it here : https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/antennas-propagation/ionospheric/hf-propagation-basics.php if interested). What this means is, to best of my understanding, the ionosphere isn't reflecting HF frequencies well.

So - my observations. Using FT8 this weekend I can see my signal being picked up, mostly around Europe. Nothing local, nothing much further. I can put this down to the fact that, as the earth is a globe, my signal cannot "bend" and relies on reflection back down to earth. If the earth was indeed flat, I would not require any bouncing of signals as such? The only thing in the way would be mountains, buildings etc but being on a high ASL myself, this would help. But what REALLY adds the heat to the fire with this one, is all of a sudden, boom, i can be heard in the states, Russia, Antarctica, etc due to changes in the atmosphere. And then... as quickly as it comes,,, it goes.

Anyone else have any thoughts or experiences themselves? Happy to go further into FT8 if anyone is interested, or provide some times / my callsign for anyone wanting to see how the propagation works on PSK Reporter.

Kev