E-type propagation

Back in the early 1980s I was starting to get a bit disenchanted with life as a wage slave, and had ideas about making my living as a freelance writer. It took ten more years to realise this ambition. However, my earliest steps in that direction were to write articles for hobby computing and ham radio magazines.

One of the radio articles I was most proud of was an article about sporadic-E propagation that I wrote and had published in the short-lived magazine Amateur Radio in 1984. Now that the sporadic-E season is upon us once again, and now that I possess a scanner with OCR capability, I thought I would scan the article and add it to the website.

Although a few major changes have occurred since the article was written, such as the break-up of the Soviet Union and the use of the Internet to spread news of band openings, the basic facts explained in the article remain true to this day, and I think it is a useful tutorial in this interesting mode of propagation. So I am happy to present for your education and enjoyment, E-type Propagation almost exactly as it was originally written.