Overview

Near Vertical Incidence Skywave Communication – Theory, Techniques and Validation

"Near Vertical Incidence Skywave Communication – Theory, Techniques and Validation" is a landmark collection of information gathered from many years of military and mon-military development and application. Near Vertical Incidence Skywave, now relatively well known in the HF radio world as NVIS, is a specific type of radio propagation that has provided communications for humankind for over a century. But, maximizing the potential of NVIS with the appropriate antennas wasn't fully understood and properly utilized until later in the 20th century. When you listen to some medium wave (MW) broadcast stations on the AM band at night, your radio is often receiving that 'not-too-distant' signal via NVIS propagation. Military and Amateur radio operators have actually been communicating via NVIS for as long as radio waves have been received, but the short skip was often mistaken as enhanced ground wave propagation.

This collection of papers and articles, assembled by authors David M. Fiedler and Edward J. Farmer, should be mandatory reading for all licensed radio operators and electrical engineering students. The basics of long and medium range Skywave and NVIS propagation are described in several different ways by a variety of writers, bringing a very important facet of radio communications to life.