Anyone else noticing a change in the range of their Part 15 stations?
Yesterday, I noted an almost doubling of the effective range of my BETS FM station. Same thing for today, but not quite as much.
Turns out that there has been a strong magnetic storm since Monday (K6), affecting Earth's atmosphere.
It appears that one of the results, at least on FM frequencies, is to greatly increase low power signal range.
Quite a turnaround from the lesser range than normal I was getting from the warm humid weather we had been having (until yesterday).
As it's been stated here many times, you need to ignore anyone who categorically states that FM range should be less than x feet or you're illegal/a pirate. There are so many factors that affect range that you should treat these people for what they are - blowhards who attempt to hide their ignorance by sounding authoritative.
Well, if there was any change in range I didn't check so I wouldn't know. Didn't know of a magnetic storm.
I will make another video soon with a walk around the area demonstrating my coverage and will put on Youtube again with a link to watch. The songs playing with the one I did last summer got past youtube's copyright rules as I mentioned in the video this was my own broadcast not a commercial radio station. Can't guarantee it will get posted this time.
Don't know how long this storm will last. But the difference in range was quite stunning.
It is thrilling to become aware of sporadic conditions in the natural environment which cause very irregular FM activity. And I believe that some circumstances cause weird anomalies up in the Wi-Fi region where we normally do not do any DXing. But I have computer software that registers all the Wi-Fi channels active within the neighborhood, and at times the list fills up with many more channels than usual.
I also have a spectrum analyzer for the 2.4 GHz band, which shows relative signal strengths and number of ongoing channels vary quite widely at different times.