Propagation News – 25 January 2026
Last week featured a massive aurora that couldn’t have been predicted in the previous report. The cause was a large Earth-directed coronal mass ejection on Sunday, 18 January at 1808UTC.
The solar wind speed was above 1,100km per second, so the impact on the Earth arrived sooner than expected. The result was that the Kp index rose to 8.33 at around 1938UTC on Monday, 19 January, sparking widespread aurora. Such was its intensity, the aurora was visible from Devon, and the Kp index was still at 8 the following day.
HF was badly affected with maximum useable frequencies over a 3,000km path struggling to reach 14MHz on 20 January.
Luckily, things have now calmed down, but it shows that it is worthwhile keeping an eye on solarham.com for daily updates.
HF DX was a little sparse during the height of the geomagnetic storm but has since recovered. 8Q7JI in the Maldives was reported as being worked on the 20m band using FT8 in the afternoon of Wednesday, 21 January.
The KP5/NP3VI Desecheo Island DXpedition continues and has been worked from the UK by better-equipped stations. 9X2AW in Rwanda will be operating for the coming two weeks. Lastly, VP2EIO in Anguilla is active until 31 January using FT8 and some SSB.
NOAA predicts that the solar flux index will start next week around 175 but decline to 165 by Friday, 30 January. Geomagnetic conditions are forecast to be reasonable, at least until 28 January when we may expect a Kp index of 4 or 5 over a three-day period.
VHF and up propagation news from G3YLA and G4BAO
The mild unsettled weather is probably going to transform into a cold unsettled pattern during the next week. However, things will stay essentially unsettled with active weather fronts or heavy showers bringing plenty of opportunity for rain scatter on the GHz bands.
After the good auroral and auroral-E propagation on the VHF bands early last week, we are in quieter territory now. However, as usual, a daily check on the Kp index will ensure you keep in touch with any sign of a recurrence.
As for meteor scatter, we are now firmly in the random meteor period for several weeks and, with no major showers available, the best times will usually be in the early hours before sunrise.
Lastly, a mention of Sporadic-E, which might crop up as brief spikes on the propquest.co.uk graphs. The foEs values in January show as isolated peaks from 5 to 7MHz, which is approximately equivalent to 10m and 6m. Perhaps a good way to see where the prospects exist is by using dxmaps.com to find current Sporadic-E paths on the 10 and 6m bands.
A second hint can be found by looking at the Sporadic-E blog tab on Propquest to see where the main weather jet streams are located. This is because Sporadic-E paths are often associated with jet streams, especially where they cross mountain ranges like the Pyrenees or Alps.
July this year sees maximum Moon declination coinciding with lowest path losses in the northern hemisphere, so there’s never been a better time to try EME operating.
This week, Moon declination is positive and rising, so Moon window length and peak elevation are increasing. Path losses are falling as we approach perigee on 29 January. 144MHz sky noise is low, rising to moderate on 29 January.
And that’s all from the propagation team this week.
Category: GB2RS Propagation News
