SUNSPOTS AID RADIO

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 25, 6 January 1928, Page 15

SUNSPOTS AID RADIO

AMERICAN PHYSICIST’S STORY. | Radio signals almost strong enough to burn up the acrial may be expected during the next few months, if theories of physicists of the Bnreaun of Standards Radio Laboratory hold true, according to a Washington dispateh to the Chicago "Herald and Examiner." The theory belongs principally to Ivy) ‘Jane Christia Pearl Wvymore, assistant | physicist in the laboratory of Dr, L. W. Austin, who conducts special ob servations on the signals of transat-. lantic stations. | Ivy Jane, of ‘The Little Sun Spot of the Radio Laboratory," as she is. called, has been working on sun spot. data for a long time. Her job is the correlation of sun spot and radio signal strength records.

CAREFUL OBSERVATIONS, At regular intervals, Ivy Jane. is fut nished with a fairly complete account of snn spot activities. At the same time, she gets a chart, whieh shows the tise amd fluctuation in the strength of radio signals for the same period. ‘The two are compared, and Ivy Jane is supposed to draw conclusions. ‘During the past few months when there has been a steady inercase in sun spots,’ says she, ‘the outstanding thing has been the remarkable increase in the strength of signals, with an attending decrease in atmospherics, "Yhe period of maximum sun spot activity is just approaching. The spots approach their maximum -in elevenyear evelcs, and late in 1928 the sun probably will be spotted like a leopard. "If the strength of radio signals continues to inerease with the inerease in sun spot activities as it has been doing, it shonldn’t be hard this winter to pick up a number of foreign broadcasting stations,"