Things I Learned: We have enough data to watch the ionosphere descend

I dropped the antenna this morning and all of a suddne, the RockMite's signal into Utah was back. This afternoon? Utah appeared again. We know why.

First, in the morning, I didn't actually 'drop' the antenna, not to say I haven't before, but this time I lowered it on purpose to see what would happen. Andddddd when I did, the Utah SDR which we've been invisible to most of the day lately, found the RockMite immediately. 

It's been kind of a pain disappearing from this station, because for the rest of the year, it provided a nice safety net. Is the radio working? I don't know, check the Utah SDR.

The antenna's launch angle is supposed to increase when the antenna is lowered, so a hypothesis began to form—the ionosphere is 'too' high.

Last night, the kid and I were able to test the hypothesis. We'd set the RockMite picokeyer up on beacon mode, and were listening to a number of SDRs in the other room in case anyone responded to our CQ calls repeating every 90 seconds or so. We heard nothing because 

A. no one was responding

B. the Utah SDR couldn't see us.

Then! The Utah SDR booomed out our CQ as the kid was studying for her ham exam. (And seriously she'd just been studying a question related to the F layer.) We verified this was the case by switching to the SDR tab. Sure enough. Then, we checked the ionogram from Pt. Arguello.

In the fifteen minutes or so leading up to being able to hear the station, the F2 layer dropped, and then kind of kerplunked:

See the movie above as well.

Note when we appeared on the RBN in Utah as well!

I don't know if this is the only cause for what we observed, but it's definitely a cause that does correlate. It's sooo nice to be able to get so much data!