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Propagation Via a Lightning strike

Oct 14th 2012, 13:22

W2BAD

Joined: Apr 27th 2005, 08:44
Total Topics: 0
Total Posts: 0

Hello,

We are teaching a Technician class and when we were discussing
the effects of the ionosphere on radio waves, one young student
asked if it was possible bounce ( reflect ) a signal off the area
surrounding a lighting strike. None of us could come up with a
good answer, so I pose the question here.

Thank You in Advance.

73
Bill Kramer w2bad
Oct 14th 2012, 19:46

W1VT

Super Moderator

Joined: Apr 4th 1998, 00:00
Total Topics: 0
Total Posts: 0
http://www.emergencyradio.ca/course/Lesson-7%20Propagation.pdf

This document mentions lightning scatter. There are theories that this exists, but reports are rare--it will take a lot of work to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you aren't seeing something else. Folks making the first 6M Earth-Moon-Earth contacts ran into a similar issue--with such big signals it was easy to hear the other station--on all sorts of modes besides EME. Fortunately for them, EME has a very characteristic time delay that makes contacts easy to verify. This may be a good topic for an advanced amateur to investigate--it is doubtful that a professional could obtain funding to study this--but an amateur--working on his own budgetary resources, doesn't have to show any sort of return on investment.

Zack Lau W1VT
ARRL Senior Lab Engineer

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