{"id":49639,"date":"2026-08-07T12:40:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T11:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/?p=49639"},"modified":"2026-08-07T12:49:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T11:49:24","slug":"propagation-news-9-august-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/blog\/news\/gb2rs\/propagation-news\/2026\/08\/07\/propagation-news-9-august-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Propagation News \u2013 9 August 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA and G4BAO on 6\u00a0August 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Sun was mostly settled last week with very little to report.<\/p>\n<p>The solar flux index declined to 108 by Thursday, 6 August, with most of the sunspot activity being on one half of the solar surface.<\/p>\n<p>Geomagnetic conditions have also been settled with a Kp index mostly below 3 for the past few days.<\/p>\n<p>A coronal mass ejection impacted the Earth and pushed the Kp index to 5.67 on Sunday, 2 August, but conditions recovered within 24 hours.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve even been almost solar flare free with, at the time of writing, only seven minor C-class events over the past three days.<\/p>\n<p>So, this all bodes well for HF propagation, although the Dourbes Digisonde shows the maximum useable frequency, or MUF, over a 3,000km path peaking at around 21 to 23MHz at midday.<\/p>\n<p>24 and 28MHz are mostly only open to Sporadic-E. Some multi-hop paths are still opening up to the Far East especially, so don\u2019t write off 10m, even if you have to listen to noise for much of the day.<\/p>\n<p>F2-layer propagation still favours North-South paths on the 10m band.<\/p>\n<p>Next week, DX to be worked includes :<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>E51KEE from the Cook Islands;<\/li>\n<li>YS\/WE9G in El Salvador;<\/li>\n<li>UK\/SP9DLM from Uzbekistan;<\/li>\n<li>OX3LX operating from Greenland.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Later in the week look for A50QO in Bhutan; J68TT from St Lucia and OJ0JR and OJ0YL working from Market Reef.<\/p>\n<p>NOAA predicts that next week the Sun will remain pretty calm and be in the 105 to 110 range. The Kp index is forecast to be mostly around 2 to 3 so conditions should remain fair but not disrupted.<\/p>\n<p>And don\u2019t forget the solar eclipse on Wednesday, 12 August. The RSGB has many activities planned, including two HF contests, WSPR activity and medium- and long-wave monitoring.<\/p>\n<p>See the August issue of <em>RadCom<\/em> for details.<\/p>\n<p><strong>VHF and up propagation\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Compiled by G3YLA and G4BAO.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The main theme of the weather during the coming week is one of some settled high pressure with tropo options, especially early in the week. This is likely to be interrupted by occasional periods of low pressure with rain for northwestern areas.<\/p>\n<p>The summer weather patterns typically produce a more showery type of rain, even from fronts, giving a reasonable chance of rain scatter. However, activity may be low in the south and east.<\/p>\n<p>Of the two modes mentioned , next week will probably be more biased towards tropo than rain scatter.<\/p>\n<p>The Kp index made a brief excursion to 5 last week but seems a bit quieter now. However, it&#8217;s useful to check now and again in case we find some radio aurora.<\/p>\n<p>The meteor scatter options feature strongly this week as the Perseids meteor shower peaks around Wednesday, 12 and Thursday, 13\u00a0August. It&#8217;s quite interesting to simply leave a receiver on a meteor scatter calling channel to hear the transient signals.<\/p>\n<p>The Sporadic-E season continues and, since meteor debris plays a role in providing the ionisation required, the Perseids week is always worth checking for a surprise opening.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of jet stream weather patterns, the stronger hints come from looking east towards the Baltic. However, other directions are not to be ignored since even quite small features, such as a slow-moving severe thunderstorm, can have an influence.<\/p>\n<p>For EME operators, Moon declination reaches maximum today, 9 August, when Moon window length and Moon elevation will be at their peak.<\/p>\n<p>Path losses are at their lowest at perigee tomorrow, 10 August. 144MHz sky noise is low to moderate until Wednesday, 12 August, when the Sun is close to the Moon in the sky due to the partial eclipse that day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA and G4BAO on 6\u00a0August 2026. The Sun was mostly settled last week with very little to report. The solar flux index declined to 108 by Thursday, 6 August, with most of the sunspot activity being on one half of the solar surface. Geomagnetic conditions have also been settled with a Kp [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-propagation-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49640,"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49639\/revisions\/49640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsgb.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}