I have some scientific instruments using Iridium modems for communication active at around or higher than 82°N. At the time of writing this message, we are in middle of August, i.e. the polar day still.
I observe that I have a very high level of messages dropout during the middle of the day, from 10am to 5pm. I have very few dropouts during the 'night', outside of this time. I am quite puzzled about this.
Any idea why this may happen?
Do you know if this has been observed before?
I have no reason to expect anything else than the pure RF communication to fail. Could it be that depending on the time, solar radiation / particles may disturb transmissions (the magnetosphere etc is well distorted by the solar wind right, so may this explain for the night vs day difference?)? Or should I blame it on the polar bears? ^^