Offline rpt

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Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« on: September 11, 2018, 02:23:33 PM »
I am an amateur radio operator (aka radio ham) and my everyday observations are consistent with the round earth model.

I take part in SOTA (Summits on the Air). I climb to the tops of hills and mountains and set up a radio station. I make contacts using various different radio bands and communicate with people both locally and over long distances.

If I use the 2m band (145MHz) I make mostly local contacts but I also manage to talk to others also on summits up to about 150km. If I switch to HF (also known as short wave) then I can communicate much further. On 40m (7MHz) contacts are usually between 500 and 1000km and on 20m (14MHz) they are 1000km to 2000km, sometimes getting as far as the US (5000km from the UK).

The round earth model can explain these observations:

VHF communication is mostly line of sight although signals can travel a little further as they are refracted by the atmosphere. For the summit to summit contacts, if I enter the altitudes of the two stations into an online calculator it will tell me the maximum line of sight range. These figures are always entirely consistent with my observations.

HF radio signals bounce off the ionosphere which is the upper atmosphere. Radiation from the sun strips electrons from the air molecules to form ions which can refract radio signals back down to earth. The degree to which this refraction happens depends on the amount of radiation from the sun, the frequency used and the angle at which the signal hits the ionosphere. If you send a radio signal straight up you can find the critical frequency. This is the highest frequency where the signal is bounced straight back down again. At the moment this is about 4MHz during the day so signals higher in frequency go straight out into space. But if the signal hits the ionosphere at a lower angle then it will be refracted, effectively reflecting it back to earth. As the frequency increases, the angle has to be lower and lower for the signal to return to earth. So this explains why my 7MHz signals can reach nearer stations than the 14MHz signals.

The time of day and year has a big impact on how far signals will go on any particular frequency. For example, during the afternoon I might be working stations around Europe. As the earth rotates and the sun's strength moves west I can no longer work Europeans but there are now Americans audible. And then at about 11 or 12 o'clock it all goes quiet and there are no more signals.

From my home location, in a valley, I can not hear many stations on VHF unless they are on a hill top. But I can still work stations far away on HF even though they are blocked by the hills around me, because they are bouncing off the ionosphere.

In the flat earth model, why would the frequency affect how far the signals travel? Why would the time of day matter? How can I still make contacts over long distances even though I live in a valley?

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #1 on: September 11, 2018, 06:26:09 PM »
In the flat earth model, why would the frequency affect how far the signals travel? Why would the time of day matter? How can I still make contacts over long distances even though I live in a valley?

None of what you described about the propagation of different frequencies in the atmosphere and the bouncing off of the ionosphere seems to have any correlation to a Round Earth.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2018, 04:05:05 PM by Tom Bishop »

Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #2 on: September 11, 2018, 07:44:12 PM »
In the flat earth model, why would the frequency affect how far the signals travel? Why would the time of day matter? How can I still make contacts over long distances even though I live in a valley?

None of what you described about the proparation of different frequencies in the atmosphere and the bouncing off of the ionosphere seems to have any correlation to a Round Earth.
Have you completed your measurements of the angle of the sun from different locations?

Offline rpt

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #3 on: September 11, 2018, 07:55:13 PM »
In the flat earth model, why would the frequency affect how far the signals travel? Why would the time of day matter? How can I still make contacts over long distances even though I live in a valley?

None of what you described about the proparation of different frequencies in the atmosphere and the bouncing off of the ionosphere seems to have any correlation to a Round Earth.
But can you answer my question?

Offline rpt

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #4 on: September 12, 2018, 07:38:24 AM »
None of what you described about the proparation of different frequencies in the atmosphere and the bouncing off of the ionosphere seems to have any correlation to a Round Earth.
The round earth model explains that the range of VHF signals is limited due to the curvature of the earth. But HF signals can travel much further because they bounce off the ionosphere. How do you explain that in the flat earth model?

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Offline Dr David Thork

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #5 on: September 12, 2018, 03:02:07 PM »
None of what you described about the proparation of different frequencies in the atmosphere and the bouncing off of the ionosphere seems to have any correlation to a Round Earth.
The round earth model explains that the range of VHF signals is limited due to the curvature of the earth. But HF signals can travel much further because they bounce off the ionosphere. How do you explain that in the flat earth model?
Why would we need to? We don't need a 'bounce' on a flat earth and we can still have a bounce from an Ionoplane if we wanted one. We also don't need bending for ground waves. We are in a far better place than you are to explain radio.
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Offline rpt

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #6 on: September 12, 2018, 04:06:24 PM »
Please explain why VHF signals are short range and HF signals are long range.

Offline rpt

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #7 on: September 13, 2018, 10:26:39 PM »
I'm still waiting for an answer.

BillO

Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #8 on: September 14, 2018, 04:06:40 PM »
Why would we need to? We don't need a 'bounce' on a flat earth and we can still have a bounce from an Ionoplane if we wanted one. We also don't need bending for ground waves. We are in a far better place than you are to explain radio.

Sorry, but the bounces would not work out the same, however you bring up a good point.  On a flat earth all radio transmission should, with a sufficiently high antenna, be basically line of sight.  This would certainly be the case over the 'flat' ocean.  However, in reality radio communications over sufficiently long stretches of water are frequency dependent - requiring frequencies low enough to be bounced off the ionosphere.

In addition, the propagation delay between transmission and reception shows the longer path taken by a bounce, rather than the shorter line of sight path.

Jimmy McGill

Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #9 on: September 15, 2018, 08:43:15 PM »
Yea it certainly appears to me that a globe earth explains radio transmission much better than the FE hypothesis.

If one had a high enough antenna, you would expect radio waves to travel all the way across the plane, which doesn’t match observations.

Offline rpt

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #10 on: September 17, 2018, 11:32:15 AM »
So the Flat Earthers cannot explain my observations. Clearly the earth is round.

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Offline juner

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #11 on: September 17, 2018, 03:02:26 PM »
So the Flat Earthers cannot explain my observations. Clearly the earth is round.

Please stop spamming the thread with low-content posts whining about no one replying to you in the way you want. Read the rules if you need further clarification. Warned.

Offline rpt

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #12 on: September 17, 2018, 03:57:58 PM »
The replies to me have all been low content. I have a round earth explanation for how radio propagation works at different frequencies but I have yet to see a flat earth explanation.

Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #13 on: September 17, 2018, 05:36:53 PM »
You are dealing with TRANSVERSE electromagnetic waves.

A true radio wave is a LONGITUDINAL electromagnetic wave.

Tesla used only longitudinal waves, and never transverse waves: this was the source of his legendary results and experiments.

A longitudinal wave (boson strings) travels through subquark waves (ether, transverse e/m waves).

A Hertzian wave is just a ripple in the sea of ether.

A non-Hertzian wave is a longitudinal wave, propagating through the transversal wave.

This is true wireless.

Tesla used exclusively non-Hertzian waves, and none of the Hertzian waves.

The speed of a radio wave is completely and absolutely linked to the density of aether in the atmosphere.

E.T. Whittaker proved mathematically the existence of the longitudinal waves (potential):

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30499.msg1994059#msg1994059

Aharonov and Bohm proved experimentally the existence of the potential.

Offline rpt

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #14 on: September 18, 2018, 08:11:17 AM »
What does this have to do with my question? How does it explain my observations?

BillO

Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #15 on: September 18, 2018, 01:44:22 PM »
I would love to see some actual experimental evidence around longitudinal EM waves.  In my knowledge, not only does sandokan's response not apply to your example, it applies to nothing I am aware of.

The problem with Whittaker's work is that it requires a medium with specific properties in order for these 'longitudinal' waves to exist and propagate.  The issue is that no such medium exists and this had been proven before Whittaker published his work.  I guess he did not want to throw out years of work, so instead just closed his mind to the overwhelming experimental evidence demonstrating his required medium did not exist.

The ether was shown to be nonsense by Michelson and Morley well over a hundred years ago.  It does not need to get re-born at this point.

EM waves are transverse.  There is no accepted theory or experimental evidence for anything else.

Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #16 on: October 15, 2018, 06:46:09 AM »
Well, you are wrong and I can proof it with a very very simple statement.
"Amateur radio". There you have it Amateur, means "those who know shit". An Amateur knows nothing. I can also claim that the Mount Everest is knly 200m high, because I am an amateur. Only professional scientists should be allowded to work with sophisticated technology. But I give a s**t about any "amateur" science.

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Offline RonJ

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #17 on: October 15, 2018, 02:36:42 PM »
The word amateur just means 'something done without payment', it doesn't mean that the person 'knows nothing'.  I have been an amateur radio operator for well over 50 years.  When I was in high school I started out playing around with radios as a hobby.  Later, I did become a 'professional' and engaged in 'playing around with radios' for pay.  I would agree that it's difficult to witness the roundness of the earth using HF radio.  The only instance I can think of that I've personally witnessed when I was in high school was hearing Russian stations using Morse code on about 14 MHz.  Usually the sounds would have the normal characteristics of any station in the world.  Occasionally, the sound would have a strong echo along with it.  That echo occurred because the same signal from the Russian station would come from two sources.  The first source was the 'direct short path' route, and the other signal came from the around the earth 'long path' route.  I suppose that the flat earth model could claim that the second signal was from the firmament, but that then opens a whole other 'can of worms'. 
You can lead flat earthers to the curve but you can't make them think!

Offline rpt

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #18 on: October 16, 2018, 11:03:17 AM »
I'm pretty certain that all the flat earthers are amateurs so I guess they know nothing as well.

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« Reply #19 on: October 16, 2018, 11:20:43 AM »
I'm pretty certain that all the flat earthers are amateurs so I guess they know nothing as well.
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