GB2RS Propagation News
Propagation News – 28 March 2021
What a mixed week we had, with large geomagnetic storms interspersed with quiet periods. The first storm occurred last weekend, when the Kp index hit six on Saturday and then five on Sunday. This wasn’t unexpected and we did warn that it might happen in the last GB2RS broadcast. A second storm occurred when a […]
Propagation News – 21 March 2021
We had a week of settled geomagnetic conditions, following a mixed weekend. The consensus on the Commonwealth Contest was that conditions were not too good, although plenty of amateurs managed to put VK in their logs, despite the Kp index hitting four during the event. The Sun remained fairly quiet, with a solar flux index […]
Propagation News – 14 March 2021
The bulk of last week saw settled geomagnetic conditions. Wednesday saw the Kp index at zero for much of the day, which is unusual. This was mainly due to a lack of disruptive coronal holes on the Sun’s surface, so the solar wind speed was mainly below 400 kilometres per second. The Sun was relatively […]
Propagation News – 7 March 2021
We had another week of geomagnetic disturbances due to high-speed solar wind streams. Although the week started well, with a Kp index of zero to three on Sunday, it went rapidly downhill. Monday saw the Kp index hit six and Tuesday evening saw it hit five after the solar wind speed exceeded 600km per second. […]
Propagation News – 28 February 2021
We had a slightly better week in terms of solar activity, but the consensus is that HF propagation is still in the doldrums. Two sunspot groups made an appearance last week, although by now they may have vanished around the Sun’s edge again. Groups 2804 and 2805 pushed the solar flux index to 81 by […]
Propagation News – 21 February 2021
Well, we’ve had another week with zero sunspots, but we did have a geomagnetic disturbance. This was caused by the frozen-in Bz magnetic field of the high-speed solar wind stream going very negative. This means it can couple more easily with the Earth’s magnetic field allowing plasma to flood in. At its peak, the stream’s […]