Propagation News – 1 February 2026

We had a much quieter week Sun-wise, with fewer geomagnetic disturbances and a decreasing solar flux index. Last week started at 153 but decreased to 133 by Wednesday.

The Kp index started the week at 2.33 and, apart from an excursion to 5.33, was below 4.33 all week. The 5.33 value was due to an enhanced solar wind stream flowing from a small coronal hole.

The lower Kp indices have meant that the ionosphere has had a chance to recover and we have been seeing maximum useable frequencies, or MUFs, over a 3,000km path reaching 35MHz at times.

The 10m band has been coming up quite nicely, with the RR90 beacon in Eastern Russia audible on 28.200MHz mid-morning. On Thursday, 29 January the band was otherwise quite bare, apart from EM0WWA in Ukraine on 28.480MHz with some sort of digitised voice. Also, PP8ZAC in Brazil was loud on 28.025MHz using CW.

A quick scan of the 28MHz low-power beacons revealed PY4YYF Brazil on 28.115MHz, YM7TEN in Turkey on 28.225MHz, and that was it. Hopefully 28MHz will improve as we head towards Spring.

Next week NOAA predicts that the solar flux index will be in the 120 to 140 range, with the Kp index set to remain low until 4 February when it is predicted to rise to 4.

So, if this goes to plan, we can expect reasonable conditions on the HF bands. However, you might be better off on 18, 21 or 24MHz as the 10m band may not be as active as we would like.

VHF and up propagation news from G3YLA and G4BAO

The recent pattern of low pressure close to the southwest of the British Isles has staked its claim for another week. This means further spells of rain, especially in the south and west.

The cold southeasterly wind over the northeastern half of the UK will persist, but any high pressure will stay well to the north and east of us, so tropo will probably be hard to find.

Rain scatter, on the other hand, may be more productive, especially for the south and west. Some periods of rain, sleet or snow are possible in the northeast where there may also be some snow static on antennas from time to time.

Meteor scatter will have to rely upon random meteors for the next few weeks and, as most of you who follow these bulletins will remember, are at a peak in the pre-dawn hours.

There has been a steady stream of auroral alerts recently. These have been mostly minor events, but it reinforces the notion that it is worth monitoring the Kp index which gives a sense of the Earth’s geomagnetic activity. High Kp values are a useful indicator of a potential auroral event.

Sporadic-E usually takes a break at this time of the year, but if you make a point of checking the foEs trace at propquest.co.uk  you may see that there are occasional spikes in the graph of the data from Dourbes in Belgium. This suggests that, although rare, out-of-season Sporadic-E does occur, especially on the lower bands such as 10m and 6m.

This week, Moon declination is positive and falling, going negative again on Thursday. Moon window length and peak elevation are falling. Path losses are rising again as we passed perigee on 29 January. 144MHz sky noise will be low all week.

And that’s all from the propagation team this week.

Category: GB2RS Propagation News