Ham radio is enjoyed by many as a hobby and is often used as a saving grace in times of natural disasters that reliability is really important. Obviously, reliability is important when ham radio is the trigger for the public service, but also relevant to the amateur as well. It can be very frustrating for ham continually suffering from the loss of signal.
Knowing what can affect the signal can actually help prevent some of the pitfalls of the operation of Ham.
Things you can not control
Some unsettled weather will cause signal loss and fade. Everyone immediately thinks of a storm, but not so simple. Of course, a storm will play a roll. Lighting can definitely affect the signal, but until sunspots. Sunspots or sun flares also well have the effect of increasing or decreasing the signal. For example, if there is direct sun flares on the geographical area that are more likely to capture a long-range signal, when moving to another hemisphere away from you that you signal the long-range capability will fall.
The barometric pressure also affect the signal. In areas of high pressure that normally signal travels through the troposphere, where weather occurs when land high pressure signals are pulled down so that normal waves that are lost in the upper atmosphere are compressed with radio waves and cause interference.
There are websites devoted to bend tropospheric forecasts to predict the patterns of radio waves used to send signals of ham.
Things you can control
The placement of the antenna is the number one thing that is within the control area of Ham. The placement of the antenna either make or break the signal reception and transmission. The response to the control of this situation is simply trial and error. There are predictive factors that can be raised online and input their location by latitude and longitude will place some very specific advice, but consider most of this software does not know how many trees, structures and other obstacles that could be on the road. Even with this process of professional orientation and the error is still important.
Over time, the ham, where you will learn the best signal burst through and get the right placement of the antenna, but the best of yesterday can not be the best day. The answer is being flexible in placement.
Some other things that are in control of Ham include equipment, other possible sources of interference such as other radios, televisions and cell phones. While the ham is forbidden to interfere with any of these signs are often the sign of Ham is invaded by those issues.
The best advice to master the frustration of signal loss and fade is be patient, this is after all supposed to be fun!
