New sunspot cycle starting

[PaulD]

Saw an article today that said we were entering a new cycle for sunspot activity which should grow and peak in mid 2013. Forcast is that the cycle will be weak to mild compared to cycles in the past but it is expected to have some impact on the wireless environment. I recall that we had some major solar flares a few years back which had a negative impact on radio and TV at the time. I was not involved in any HA activity at that time so I am curious what type of impact we might expect to experience in this new cycle.

Any thoughts on how a solar sunspot cycle might impact our wireless HA environment? Any known ways to help minimize any impact other than to use hardwire rather than wireless whenever possible?

 

[elcano]

Saw an article today that said we were entering a new cycle for sunspot activity which should grow and peak in mid 2013. Forcast is that the cycle will be weak to mild compared to cycles in the past but it is expected to have some impact on the wireless environment. I recall that we had some major solar flares a few years back which had a negative impact on radio and TV at the time. I was not involved in any HA activity at that time so I am curious what type of impact we might expect to experience in this new cycle.

Any thoughts on how a solar sunspot cycle might impact our wireless HA environment? Any known ways to help minimize any impact other than to use hardwire rather than wireless whenever possible?

The sun has activity cycles of 11 years. There was a good peak in 1989 and again around 2000, but apparently the next one is delayed as the activity today is lower than expected.

This activity affects atmosphere ionization at some layers (D, E or F, I dont remember), and changes propagation properties at different frequencies. The atmosphere becomes denser (for the radio waves) and reflects VHF waves that would have normally traverse it. These reflected waves travel very far, but on the contrary, the low frequencies are negatively impacted.

If the sunspot activity becomes really high, the effects are much less benign, as they approach more to the effects of an EM bomb:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/07/space_katrina/
We dont want to see this. Life and civilization as we know it, might change in a blink.