Propagation News – 4 June 2023

We had a relatively calm period last week with the Kp index remaining below three and plenty of sunspots. Although we started the week with the Solar Flux Index in the low 150s, it quickly picked up to reach 161 by Thursday.

As a result, there was DX to be had, although most of the attention was on 6m where some outstanding multi-hop DX contacts were being made.

But back on HF and people have been chasing T31TT on the Central Kiribati Islands. Some have made it, but it’s a difficult path.

Closer to home, Nobby Styles, G0VJG and Emil, DL8JJ have been active on Rockall, which is IOTA EU-189, using the callsign MM0UKI.

Rockall is an uninhabitable granite islet situated in the North Atlantic. The nearest permanently inhabited place is North Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, 200 nautical miles to the east.

They have been worked from the UK mainland on 30m and 20m and heard in the east of England on 15m, possibly via Sporadic-E. They may have been a little too close to northern areas for 20m as you may have been inside their skip zone.

One of their aims is to raise as much as possible for the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity and ABF, The Soldiers’ Charity, so please support them if you can.

This weekend we may have unsettled geomagnetic conditions partly due to an Earth-facing coronal hole with the Kp index peaking at five.

But after the weekend things may settle with a maximum Kp index of two. The solar flux index is predicted to be around 150, declining to 130 as the week goes on, so HF conditions may be down a little on last week.

VHF and up

The weather pattern seems stuck in its typical late spring/early summer state with cold north-easterly winds in eastern areas. There are good prospects for western Britain to shine but leaving eastern areas struggling.

The root cause is a large area of high pressure that is over northern Britain, and currently trying to transfer to the east, which could improve things. Either way, it does mean that Tropo was doing a lot of the propagation work last week and will do so for much of next week too.

As the high edges east, or splits into one to the west and one to the east of the UK, it could leave room for isolated thundery showers to encroach into southern and southwestern areas and give a chance of rain scatter on the GHz bands.

The main mode of interest will probably be Sporadic-E and there have been a few examples in the last week, both single-hop within Europe and multi-hop paths to the States, the Far East and Australia.

The first week of June is typically a prime period for Sporadic-E and although the jet stream position suggests mainly paths northeast to Scandinavia and Baltic regions will be best, other multi-hop options farther afield are worth exploring too.

Monitor the clusters and band maps to see where the activity is happening. If you hear this in time, you might want to check out the 24-hour UK Six Metre Group Summer Sporadic-E contest which ends at 1300UTC today, the 4 June. There should be plenty of activity.

Other modes may also pop into view, such as aurora and meteor scatter, so we may be spoilt for choice.

Moon declination is negative all week and still falling until Tuesday. We are past apogee so path losses will fall as the week goes on. So we will also have short Moon windows with falling path losses until perigee late Tuesday. 144MHz sky noise is high, reaching a peak of 2700K on Monday and only going below 300K by Friday.

Category: GB2RS Propagation News