Topic: Solar Storm Impact On Davis Spread Spectrum

[GregJ]

Yesterday we had that huge solar storm with Kp readings just shy of 9.  Definitely high enough to tinker with radio signals.  I operate and maintain 4 Davis Vantage Pro2 wireless systems.  One personal and 3 installed at our grocery stores.  It came to my attention that the wind graph at one of our stores was stuck at 10mph.  I looked into it and the console appears to have lost communications for a little under 2 hours and then self corrected.  I have never had this happen in the 9 years I have operated these stations.  In the past, if it went down, it has been a PC issue or a battery issue at the ISS and they stay down.  The strange thing about this is it self corrected.  Just curious if anybody else noticed signal drop during this time yesterday.  I looked at my Aurora Alert log and Kp was around 8 at the time of the outage....  This was between 5:00pm and 7:00pm PST.

Greg

[BigOkie]

Yesterday we had that huge solar storm with Kp readings just shy of 9.  Definitely high enough to tinker with radio signals.  I operate and maintain 4 Davis Vantage Pro2 wireless systems.  One personal and 3 installed at our grocery stores.  It came to my attention that the wind graph at one of our stores was stuck at 10mph.  I looked into it and the console appears to have lost communications for a little under 2 hours and then self corrected.  I have never had this happen in the 9 years I have operated these stations.  In the past, if it went down, it has been a PC issue or a battery issue at the ISS and they stay down.  The strange thing about this is it self corrected.  Just curious if anybody else noticed signal drop during this time yesterday.  I looked at my Aurora Alert log and Kp was around 8 at the time of the outage....  This was between 5:00pm and 7:00pm PST.

Greg

Nope, not here (NE Oklahoma).  For me actually, I had better than average reception over the last 48 hours.  Interesting for sure.

[nincehelser]

My understanding is that the "blackouts" occur as the radio waves no longer "bounce" effectively off the ionosphere.   They shouldn't impact local transmissions at all. 

[SlowModem]

My station worked ok during those hours.  Of course, we were farther around the globe and headed towards the dark hours by then.

There were some great southern lights posted online.  Here's one story, and I'm sure there are many more:

http://news.yahoo.com/pink-aurora-southern-northern-lights-photo-new-zealand-152328218.html

[martymoose]

Yesterday we had that huge solar storm with Kp readings just shy of 9.  Definitely high enough to tinker with radio signals.  I operate and maintain 4 Davis Vantage Pro2 wireless systems.  One personal and 3 installed at our grocery stores.  It came to my attention that the wind graph at one of our stores was stuck at 10mph.  I looked into it and the console appears to have lost communications for a little under 2 hours and then self corrected.  I have never had this happen in the 9 years I have operated these stations.  In the past, if it went down, it has been a PC issue or a battery issue at the ISS and they stay down.  The strange thing about this is it self corrected.  Just curious if anybody else noticed signal drop during this time yesterday.  I looked at my Aurora Alert log and Kp was around 8 at the time of the outage....  This was between 5:00pm and 7:00pm PST.

Greg

dont know if related i have a vantage pro that for the last 7 days stops sending data between 6:15am and 9:15am every day
have changed battery  at whits end
seeing if anyone else has this issue

[Aardvark]

Davis transmissions are direct line of sight.  No effect.

[DeKay]

Davis transmissions are direct line of sight.  No effect.

Erm, not really.  The console antenna is not highly directional and the input bandwidth is fairly wide.  I suppose it is possible that a wideband blast of garbage could cause reception issues, especially if the received signal level isn't that strong in the first place.  Not a heck of a lot you could do to fix it besides seeing if you can increase your received signal strength in the first place to ride these things out.  Or do nothing and live with the problem every nine years.  That's what I would do   

[dalecoy]

dont know if related i have a vantage pro ...

This posting was the first time you (martymoose) have ever posted anything to this forum, so clearly you didn't...

.... i have a vantage pro that for the last 7 days stops sending data between 6:15am and 9:15am every day
have changed battery  at whits end
seeing if anyone else has this issue

Let's see.  Vantage pro or pro2?  How long have you had it?  How far between the ISS and the console?  What things are in between?

What battery did you change (console or ISS?).  What do the console diagnostics say (see the manual for instructions)?  What changes did you recently make?  What else happens during that timeframe?

More questions after you answer those, I think.

[Scalphunter]

I would look for some other cause Greg.  I am almost under the aurora arc a ND both the OS and Davis station did m not lose any signals. Other then an annual battery change out on the OS was the only time it was down. It may have been something locally causing the signal loss.

John

[yahtah]

dont know if related i have a vantage pro ...

This posting was the first time you (martymoose) have ever posted anything to this forum, so clearly you didn't...

.... i have a vantage pro that for the last 7 days stops sending data between 6:15am and 9:15am every day
have changed battery  at whits end
seeing if anyone else has this issue

Let's see.  Vantage pro or pro2?  How long have you had it?  How far between the ISS and the console?  What things are in between?

What battery did you change (console or ISS?).  What do the console diagnostics say (see the manual for instructions)?  What changes did you recently make?  What else happens during that timeframe?

More questions after you answer those, I think.

And certainly you should start a new thread as your problems are not related to this. 

[Aardvark]

Signals from the Davis stations are not strong enough to be bounced off the atmosphere. But believe what you want.  this topic has been discussed about RF interference.