Propagation News – 6 October 2024

In the first week of October, the 10m band began to show what it is capable of. With a solar flux index in the high 200s and calm geomagnetic conditions, DX was plentiful.

Nick, VK9DX on Norfolk Island was audible on SSB all morning on Wednesday 2 October and only wanted to work G stations. This made him popular in the UK, but less so in other countries!

Vlad, 5H1WX, on Mafia Island, Tanzania, was another strong signal on the morning of the third. Meanwhile, the 3D2V Rotuma Island DXpedition near Fiji on the 10m band using FT4 was another catch for many people.

The Kp index managed to remain low for the first half of the week, but there were warnings that a coronal mass ejection, which was attributed to the X7.1 solar flare on the 1 October, might upset things later in the week.

With a good spread of sunspots, mainly in the Sun’s southern hemisphere, there could be more flares over the coming days.

Scott Mcintosh, the solar physicist who predicted a busier than average Cycle 25, has now questioned whether we are past solar maximum. The fact that there are now fewer sunspots in the Northern hemisphere suggests that we may be past the peak, but only time will tell.

Meanwhile, NOAA predicts the solar flux index may decline towards the 200 mark next week. The Kp index is predicted to go to 4 this weekend. With four of the ten active sunspot groups now classed as growing, we may expect further solar activity and geomagnetic disturbances over the next seven days.

VHF and up

The brief period of high pressure that arrived towards the end of the previous week is currently being nudged away to the east into Europe.

The coming week is dominated by very unsettled conditions with a succession of deep lows near or crossing the country and there’s even one that contains the remnants of an old hurricane.

The result is that next week will provide copious amounts of wet and windy weather, so no Tropo for us, but there may be several areas of heavy rain for a try at rain scatter on the GHz bands.

We hope you have all checked out your antennas after last week’s reminder since the winds may be quite testing for some areas.

The solar conditions have been stirred up recently by several flares so, as usual, keep an autumn watch out for auroras.

Lastly, there are plenty of meteor scatter opportunities aside from any random meteor activity. Try investigating one of the many meteor websites to see the full list of options.

For EME operators, Moon declination is at its minimum on Wednesday. So, it is a good week for checking out systems before the Sun also gets too low in the sky to make sensible Sun noise measurements over the winter. Path losses are still high but starting to fall.

If you’re fortunate to have a clear low horizon you’ll make some contacts, but with peak Moon elevation only eight degrees on Wednesday, you’ll be lucky! 144MHz sky noise in general is high to moderate for the rest of the week.

Category: GB2RS Propagation News