We describe simultaneous radar observations made with the Cornell University Portable Radar Interferometer (CUPRI) at 50 MHz and the Arecibo incoherent scatter radar (ISR) at 430 MHz during the El Coquí campaign of 1992 in Puerto Rico. The goal was to study the plasma instabilities that cause coherent radar backscatter from the E region at mid-latitudes. The common volume data reveal that the coherent CUPRI echoes come from sporadic-E layers that exhibit no obvious gravity wave modulation but possess high densities and sharp gradients. The echoes with positive (negative) Doppler shifts, i.e. eastward (westward) plasma wave phase velocities, come from the top (bottom) of the layer, in agreement with simple local equatorial gradient-drift instability theory, even though this theory is not valid at mid-latitudes, where nonlocal shorting effects along magnetic field lines play a crucial role. We have developed a nonlocal theory that takes these effects into account. Our theory, which is discussed in detail in a companion paper, does not invoke any unusual layer geometry, in contrast to the ideas proposed in several papers in recent years. The unstable eigenmodes are a sum of plane waves with k-vectors having a small component parallel to the geomagnetic field, such that the modes are confined primarily to either the top or bottom of the layer, depending on the driving electric field. The direction of these k-vectors deviates from normal to the magnetic field by at most a few tenths of a degree. The k-vectors are also approximately aligned with the E×B drift. While both the density and potential fluctuations peak in amplitude on the unstable side of the layer, the density peak is closer to the maximum of the layer than is the potential peak. We do not in this paper deal with the “quasi-periodic” or QP nature of the radar echoes that is sometimes, but certainly not always, seen.
