Solar Flare and AM radio?

Solar Flare and AM radio?

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July 6, 2009 - Sudden Intense Sunspot 1024. Could It Flare on July 7, As Crop Formations Since April Have Seemed to Forecast?

Active region 1024 is putting on a fantastic show. The center of this region is incredibly bright and fluctuating.” - Pete Lawrence, Amateur Astronomer, Selsey, U.K.

Spaceweather.com reports, “Sunspot 1024 is crackling with B- and C-class solar flares. The activity is so intense, astronomers can't seem to take a picture of the sunspot without catching a flare in action. Solar observers haven't seen an active region like this one in more than two years. It

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I was at work today. I work in a production room and I have sports talk radio AM on all day. Several times throughout the day today I heard a crackling sound coming from the radio. Now I have been listening to the same chennel for 7 years and have never heard the kind of disruptive feedback I heard today. Now naturally I wouldn't be listening for that sound so it may have happened here or there along those seven years, but today it was very pronounced and was very vocal almost screaming crackle sounds.

Could a solar storm create the sounds I was hearing? Is anyone familiar with how Am works and if solar radiation hits effect trasmission? Any insight from members with knowledge would be great.

Could an immanent major solar storm be indicated by monitoring the AM stations? Could that be an early warning source?
Thanks

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My father was a ham radio operator for 30 years and he said that we could experience some interference.

I'm outsde right now on my phone starring at a crazy full moon. Its beautiful...but sooky.

Tomorrow should be another plain old day, however I have alternative plans ready..my lady and her kids are ready to go when I say.

I listen to ESPN radio at night and I notice that from time to time I get an unexplanable intense interference almost every morning around 10am that goes on for 30 seconds or so, then off for 30 more. Thing is no one is awake but me heh, thought it was odd.

Yes it does cause some interference. It can extend the range of AM communications thousands of miles where they would normally travel up to 50 miles under normal conditions. You can get crosstalk on the lower end of the spectrum too.

On CB / HAM radio, operators use this to their advantage and contact tests are performed to see how far their stations are heard.

I've had lots of overseas fun the past week or so. Really fun stuff.

Solar storms can definatley cause radio static or interference, or it may have been a thunder storm in the vicinity.

when i was younger and there was thunder in the area, i used to put my radio on AM and you could hear the lightning strikes through the radio!

AM/FM/SW/LW, whatever. Its all bandwidth,frequency, all affected by these things.

[edit on 7-7-2009 by grantbeed]

Don't forget also that most of the static on your radio is generally caused by the sun in the first place. If the sun didn't exist our radios would have very little to almost no static on them. AM would still crackle from earthly causes like lightning and man made interference, but FM would almost be silent w/o the sun causing its burps and radiation.
Static on a radio is caused by a few things, the sun itself, earth noises, man made, and internal static caused by the receivers sensitive front end amplifying devices.

Usually the sunspots effect the lower VHF bands the most but it's well known to cause loud strange sounding static on shortwave bands and could cause those same effects on the higher AM broadcast bands.
I have noticed this effect quite a bit these last few years. I am an avid shortwave listener and radio electronics has always been one of my favorite hobbies. These last years just listening to channels w/o any signals and only static is interesting because you can almost hear the sun. Sometimes the flairs are so powerful that the static is strong enough to make the signal strength meter on my radio go half up above its normal 0 point.
From my experience flairs tend to sound almost like digitized static like it's grainy and blotchy sounding where as regular static just sounds like popcorn.

If I recall correctly this is how NASA studies the suns activity on radio bands by simply taking readings of static strength on the upper UHF bands.

Interesting topic, hope some others can fill us in.

[edit on 7/7/2009 by darklife]