The long string of days with no sunspots continues, with spots last observed nearly a month ago, on May 18. According to spaceweather.com on June 12, there have been no sunspots for 24 days in a row.

Predicted solar flux for the next 45 days is 68 on June 14 through July 28. That’s right, the prediction updated on June 13 is nothing but 68 on every day for the near future.

Predicted planetary A index is 8 on June 14, 10 on June 15-18, 8 on June 19, 5 on June 20-23, then 8, 12 and 8 on June 24-26, 5 on June 27 through July 5, then 10, 8, 10 and 8 on July 6-9, then 5 on July 10-20, then 8, 10 and 8 on July 21-23, and 5 on July 24-28.

Geomagnetic activity forecast for the period June 14 until July 10, 2019 from F.K. Janda, OK1HH.

Geomagnetic field will be:

Quiet on June 17-18, 28, July 3, 7-8

Quiet to unsettled on 15, 19, 22, 27, 30, July 1-2, (10)

Quiet to active on June (14,) 16, 20-21, 26, 29, (July 4-9)

Unsettled to active on June 23-25

No active to disturbed days predicted.

Solar wind will intensify on June 14 (-15), 24-27, July 5-7, 10-11

Parenthesis means lower probability of activity enhancement.

The ARRL June VHF Contest was last weekend, and Scott Avery, WA6LIE, reports, “This last VHF contest was definitely unique. During the day expecting sporadic E, we were influenced by a lot of meteor scatter caused by the Beta Taurids, a daytime event that is not advertised as it is not seen and only radio astronomers and hams would be interested. I spent a lot of time on 6 meters FT8 mode as there was little SSB/CW activity. Two meters was the same.

“I was bombarded with pings CQ TEST, but then the signal would vanish. This happened for most of the daylight hours with few exchanges. MSK144, which is a true meteor-scatter mode, worked great, but everyone was on FT8, so few contacts were made.

"At about 0300z we had an opening to Japan that lasted for about 3 hours, so I snagged a few contacts. That opening from Japan to the central coast of California was about 1 hour long.

“The Midwest enjoyed an opening to Japan on Sunday at around 2100z for about an hour.

"Finally, at 2200z on Sunday, we got some multi-hop Es to the east coast. It was a bit late for the contest, but welcome.”

Jon Jones, N0JK, also sent a report on the VHF contest: "Conditions on 6 meters were uneven, but on Sunday even we had a great opening to Japan from here in the Midwest.

“Operators in Kansas including N0LL, WQ0P, and KF0M worked Japan from 2330 to 0030z. I de-coded JG1TSG at about 0020z with just a 1/4 wavelength vertical whip antenna on my car.

“I should note that W7D/R put rare grid DN10 in many logs."

Steve Sacco, NN4X, reported, “Finally, some decent E-skip on 12 meters! I was able to work S9A and some others for new DXCC entities on the band today (Sunday 6/9/2019, 1537Z on FT8).”

Check out the latest video from WX6SWW: https://www.youtube.com/c/TamithaSkov

This weekend is the CW portion of the All-Asian DX Contest: https://www.jarl.org/English/4_Library/A-4-3_Contests/2019AA_rule.htm

If you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers, email the author at, k7ra@arrl.net.

For more information concerning radio propagation, see the ARRL Technical Information Service at http://arrl.org/propagation-of-rf-signals. For an explanation of numbers used in this bulletin, see http://arrl.org/the-sun-the-earth-the-ionosphere.

An archive of past propagation bulletins is at http://arrl.org/w1aw-bulletins-archive-propagation. More good information and tutorials on propagation are at http://k9la.us/.

Monthly propagation charts between four USA regions and twelve overseas locations are at http://arrl.org/propagation.

Instructions for starting or ending email distribution of ARRL bulletins are at http://arrl.org/bulletins.

Sunspot numbers for June 6 through 12, 2019 were 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, and 0, with a mean of 0. 10.7 cm flux was 68.9, 68.9, 68.4, 68.4, 68.9, 69.7, and 69.5, with a mean of 69. Estimated planetary A indices were 3, 4, 18, 6, 3, 3, and 4, with a mean of 5.9. Middle latitude A index was 4, 6, 14, 8, 4, 3, and 5, with a mean of 6.3.