Propagation News – 15 February 2026

It has been a good time for HF DX. Settled geomagnetic conditions and a fairly high solar flux index has meant the ionosphere has had time to shine.

With the Kp index not exceeding 4.33, and generally being in the ones and twos, coupled with a solar flux index in the 160s, this has meant that the upper HF bands have been humming.

This is despite many relatively minor C- and M-class solar flares.

DX heard or worked this week includes stations in Vietnam, India, Australia and New Zealand on the 10m band, even with modestly equipped stations.

DX being chased includes the KP5/NP3VI Desecheo Island DXpedition near Puerto Rico. This has been difficult, often because they are running low power on their remotely controlled rigs. But UK stations have got through on all bands from 40 to 10m.

Due to deteriorating sea conditions they have delayed equipment recovery until 3 March, so you still have time to work them.

The next big DXpedition to look forward to is 3Y0K from Bouvet Island. Due to technical problems with their ship, the operation has been delayed and will now start around 26 February.

With the path to Bouvet being almost due south from the UK, propagation predictions suggest that the path should be open from around 0730UTC until 1830UTC, up to 10m, with 21MHz being open from around 0800 to 1000UTC and again from 1600 to 1800UTC.

Outside of these times, look for a path on the 20 or even 30 or 40m bands, in the evening and night.

FT8 will be the most favourable mode, but CW and SSB are possible. However, remember they will be using split frequency operation.

Next week, NOAA predicts that the solar flux index will increase to be in the 160 to 180 range. Geomagnetic conditions may start the week settled, with a predicted Kp index of 2, but we may expect more unsettled conditions as the week progresses with a predicted Kp index of 4 from 16 to 21 February.

So, get your HF Dxing in early next week!

VHF and up propagation news from G3YLA and G4BAO

The weather is often described as blocked when we see long-lasting high pressure, which hangs around for weeks at a time and is a gift for tropo on VHF. However, right next door to a blocked high you will probably find a low-pressure region, which is also blocked for the same reason.

Currently, we are in the middle of a prolonged period of blocked low pressure, hence the rain and absence of tropo. The position of the low varies a bit, of course, so sometimes we will have milder southerly winds with rain and at other times colder northerlies with snow.

We have the full variety in the coming week or so and that means no tropo for VHF operators but plenty of rain scatter for the GHz folk.

The meteor scatter position hasn’t changed since last week’s news, so we are once again confined to random activity and, for this, early morning hours are usually best.

Aurora alerts continue to trickle through and as we approach the spring equinox the chances of auroras improve, but there is a little way to go yet.

Lastly, thoughts of Sporadic-E remain dormant since we are some way short of the typical early season openings of late April and May. As usual, consider checking the propquest.co.uk  graphs occasionally, which have shown minor peaks of the foEs, or critical frequency of the Es layer, in the early evening on some days.

The Moon reached perigee, its closet point to the Earth on 10 February. The Moon is moving toward apogee on Sunday, 22 February, meaning path loss will gradually increase throughout the week as the Moon’s distance grows. Cosmic background noise is relatively low during this period, which helps maintain a better signal-to-noise ratio.

Category: GB2RS Propagation News