‰ Now 18 WPM transition files follows ‰

Visible sunspots continued last week for eight days straight, the
longest continuous period of sunspot visibility since the twelve
days of March 23 through April 3 2008.  For this week a solar wind
stream is headed our way, and may strike October 28.  The NOAA Space
Weather Prediction Center places the predicted effect slightly
later, with a predicted planetary A index for October 27 through
November 1 at 5, 8, 12, 15, 10 and 5.  Geophysical Institute Prague
predicts quiet conditions for October 24, quiet to unsettled October
25, quiet October 26 and 27, quiet to unsettled October 28,
unsettled to active October 29, and unsettled October 30.  Both
predictions place the disturbance between this weekends CQ Worldwide
SSB DX Contest, October 25 and 26, and the ARRL CW Sweepstakes a
week later.  Yes, they do change polarity.  We can see this by
looking at magnetograms of the Sun.  Go to the
sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov site and look for the realtime data.  This
site has an archive of recent images.  Below the top section is a
List of Individual Images for the current month.  The leading
characters in the filename represent year, month and day, and the
last four indicate time in UTC.  There is a link at the very bottom
called List of all individual images which leads to an archive for
the whole year.  You can look at images from October 10 to 17 to see
that string of recent sunspots.  If you click on the 10 15 2008
0941z file, you can see a big spot in the northern hemisphere with
black on the right, white on the left.  It is tracking from left to
right, and if this were below the equator, it would be an old Cycle
23 spot.  But this sunspot is a Cycle 24 sunspot, and note that
spots above and below the equator have opposite polarity.  So a
Cycle 23 sunspot north of the equator would have black on the left
and white on the right.  Go back to the list page, and click on the
List of All Individual Images link on the bottom of the page so we
can see spots between March 23 and April 3 mentioned at the top of
the bulletin.  Note that these spots are black on the right like the
recent spots, but it is difficult to tell which side of the equator
they are on, so the cycle status may be indeterminate.  The new
cycle is said to begin when there are more new cycle spots than old,
but I have no idea over what time frame.  If we look at only the
spots from last week, since no Cycle 23 spots appear, this must mean
that Cycle 24 has started, unless we look over a longer time period
and determine that Cycle 23 spots are not in the minority.  For more
information concerning radio propagation, see the ARRL Technical
Information Service web page.  For a detailed explanation of the
numbers used in this bulletin, see the k9la prop link off the TIS
page.  An archive of past propagation bulletins is also available.
Monthly propagation charts between four USA regions and twelve
overseas locations are on the qst/propcharts link off the ARRL web
page.  Sunspot numbers were 24, 11, 0, 0, 0, 0, and 0 with a mean of
5.  10R7 cm flux was 71R9, 70, 69R2, 69R6, 69R2, 68R8, and 67R7 with
a mean of 69R5.  Estimated planetary A indices were 4, 2, 1, 6, 2, 3
and 5 with a mean of 3R3.  Estimated mid latitude A indices were 5,
1, 1, 5, 2, 3 and 5 with a mean of 3R1‚

‰ End of 18 WPM transition files ‰