Propagation News – 19 July 2026

Compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA and G4BAO on Thursday, 16 July 2026.

Last week was characterised by a falling solar flux index.

Over the past week it has gone from 116 to 100, but the good news is that we have only had one M-class solar flare in that time and a multitude of lesser C-class flares that haven’t amounted to much.

As a result, the Kp index remained low, certainly below 4, other than one excursion to 4.67 on Sunday, 12 July.

This means propagation has been stable rather than outstanding. But as the winners of the World Radiosport Team Championship showed last week, it was still possible to make 5,800 QSOs in 24 hours.

An analysis shows that the best scoring band was 20m, closely followed by 15m and 40m. The predominant mode was CW.

Maximum usable frequencies, or MUFs, over a 3,000km path have been peaking at around 19 to 23MHz at midday, according to the Dourbes DigiSonde.

Major DXpeditions to be worked this week include RT25AA, the Arctic Legends IOTA DXpedition; TY5FR from Benin; VP5G in Turks [and Caicosand HP1/LA5IIA operating from Panama.

The 20m band remains good for contacts across the Northern Hemisphere during daylight, while the 15m band offers better opportunities for north-south paths.

Next week NOAA predicts that the solar flux index may increase, perhaps to 135.

Geomagnetic conditions are forecast to be good for the first half of the week, but a Kp index of 4 is forecast for Wednesday, 22 July and Thursday, 23 July so expect declining MUFs and poorer HF conditions around that time.

There are currently no coronal holes to worry about.

VHF and up propagation news

Compiled by G3YLA and G4BAO.

The coming period of weather feels very much like what we’ve been getting in the last week or so.

High pressure dominates the chart and, since it’s placed just west of Great Britain, this implies a north-westerly flow over the country, with a chance of tropo for many areas.

Last week saw northerly paths worked from the UK up to the Faroe Islands, Norway and Sweden on both 144 and 432MHz.

The high-pressure part of the story suggests not much, if any, rain to speak of and therefore rain scatter is unlikely.

The auroral prospects are not especially great in radio terms. There are about three meteor showers currently giving a broad period of activity for meteor scatter operators and providing long-lived ionisation as fuel for Sporadic-E.

In view of the links between Sporadic-E and jet streams, the upper air jet stream patterns suggest favouring paths to the south east into the Balkans round to the north east and Scandinavia for Sporadic E.

Don’t ignore the options for multi-hop paths into the Far East in the morning on the 6m band and later in the day to the United States, which have been very good lately.

For EME operators, Moon declination is falling again and passed perigee on Monday, 13 July so Moon window lengths will shorten and path losses increase.

144MHz sky noise is low, increasing to moderate on Thursday, 23 July.

Category: GB2RS Propagation News