GB2RS Propagation News
Propagation News – 24 June 2018
A glancing blow from a coronal hole sent the K-index soaring to five on Tuesday, the 19th. This hadn’t been predicted by NOAA as it looked like the high-speed solar wind stream might miss us. However, by Wednesday the ionosphere had calmed down and the index returned to a more settled Kp=1. Much of the […]
Propagation News – 17 June 2018
It was more of the same last week with virtually zero sunspots, but some sporadic E to keep us amused on HF. We say virtually zero sunspots as a group had just appeared over the sun’s limb, pushing the sunspot number to 16 as the time of writing. This represents 10 for the single group […]
Propagation News – 10 June 2018
Despite poor geomagnetic conditions, HF propagation for last weekend’s National Field Day was actually better than we forecast. Norfolk Amateur Radio Club even managed to contact New Zealand via the F layer on 40 metres. NFD was no doubt helped by sporadic E, which gave good propagation to Europe on most bands. Speaking of sporadic […]
Propagation News – 3 June 2018
A large coronal hole on the Sun didn’t affect the HF bands earlier in the last week as its associated high-speed solar wind stream hadn’t had time to reach Earth. However, this was probably the quiet before the geomagnetic storm as the solar material was predicted to reach us at around 450-500km per second sometime […]
Propagation News – 27 May 2018
A glancing blow from a high-speed solar wind stream caused the K-index to rise to three on Wednesday. This was a little unexpected as it came from a polar coronal hole on the Sun that didn’t look like it would impact the Earth. This brought mixed blessings as an initial positive phase saw the maximum […]
Propagation News – 20 May 2018
Last week continued with zero sunspots after the 13th and a solar flux index of around 70. NOAA had forecast poorer geomagnetic conditions from Thursday, the 17th. The solar wind speed, as measured at the ACE spacecraft, did increase on Thursday morning but the K-index hadn’t got above three by Thursday afternoon. Overall, HF conditions […]
