The K7RA Solar Update
At 2313 UTC on October 27 Australia’s Space Weather Services released a geomagnetic warning. On October 28-29 expect unsettled to active geomagnetic conditions due to a coronal hole high speed wind stream.
We saw a decline in solar activity over the past reporting week (October 20-26) compared to the previous week. Average daily sunspot numbers were 18.7, down from 31 in the previous seven days.
Average daily solar flux went from 83.4 to 76.9 over the same two periods.
Geomagnetic indicators were up only slightly, with average daily planetary A index changing from 19.1 to 20.3, and average daily mid-latitude A index moving from 14 to 16.7.
One caveat: the mid-latitude A index values for October 22-24 were estimated, by me. Note the values (left column) for the mid-latitude A index:
http://services.swpc.noaa.gov/text/daily-geomagnetic-indices.txt
It appears that for over 60 hours there was a problem with data from the geomagnetic observations from Virginia, and every place on this table that you see a -1 indicated, the data is missing.
The latest forecast (from Thursday, October 27) predicts solar flux at 78, 77 and 76 on October 28-30, then 78, 80, 85 and 90 on October 31 through November 3, 80 on November 4-6, 78 on November 7-10, 75 on November 11-12, 73 on November 13-16, 75 on November 17-19, then 76, 74, and 73 on November 20-22, then 71, 70, 71 and 77 on November 23-26, then 80 on November 27 through December 3, 78 on December 4-7 and 75 on December 8-9.
Predicted planetary A index is 24, 18 and 16 on October 28-30, then 14, 12, 8 and 6 on October 31 through November 3, 5 on November 4-5, 8 on November 6, 5 on November 7-10, then 10, 15, 18, 10 and 8 on November 11-15, 5 on November 16-18, then 10, 32, 44, 40 and 22 on November 19-23, 18 on November 24-25, then 14, 20 and 12 on November 26-28, 5 on November 29 through December 2, 10 on November 3, 5 on November 4-7 and 10 on November 8.
F.K. Janda, OK1HH gives us his weekly geomagnetic forecast:
“Geomagnetic activity forecast for the period October 28-November 21, 2016
Geomagnetic field will be:
Quiet on November 6-7, 16-17
Mostly quiet on November 5, 15, 18
Quiet to unsettled on November 1-4, 10-11, 14, 19
Quiet to active on October 29-31, November 8, 12-13
Active to disturbed on October 28, November 9, 20-21
Amplifications of the solar wind from coronal holes are expected on November 6-12, 18-21.”
On October 25, I received a couple of emails from Jeff Hartley, N8II of Shepherdstown, West Virginia (FM19cj). Here is his report:
“It has been pretty interesting following band conditions vs. SFI and K indexes. Some trends are clear. The bands down to 30 meters are closing early and are already affected by the low SFI. Twenty meter was open to California until about 0100Z for their QSO party Oct 1-2. Lately, however, paths to the West Coast are nearly gone by 2320Z.
“I worked 20 ten-meter CA QSOs then with flux in the 80s; recently only South America has been workable on 10. Sunday, October 23, was a very good day for DX on 20-12 meters. Fifteen meters was wide open to all of Europe by 1300Z.
“I contacted European Russians in the 1, 3, and 4 call areas on 15-meter CW with the loudest, RA3DS, at S9 and R3EV at over S-9.
“Stations from Norway and south Sweden were loud; Turkey and Ukraine were also logged. Then, I struggled for a while to work Europe on 12 meters (SFI only 78 with the K index at 2) through my S5 noise level starting with DL1KSB in Germany at 1421Z. DF0WRTC was S9, but most stations were weak until around 1520Z when G3WGV in England called in.
“Then, on SSB, Alex, GD6IA, on the Isle of Man was logged at S9 +15 dB at 1534Z followed by Torgeir, LA4UOA, in Norway peaking at over S9. They both have big antennas and big 12-meter signals. Torgeir reported a 12-meter SSB QSO with VP6AH on Pitcairn Island in the eastern Pacific with an S9 signal, but he faded fast to the noise.
“I worked VP6AH on a marginal path on 12-meter phone.
“I went on to log SSB stations in Germany, England, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Wales, Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Sardinia on 12 meters until 1615Z.
“I also caught Jeff, TZ4AM, in Mali on 12 meter CW at 1637Z. He was very weak at first, but built up to about S6 on peaks. During the afternoon, I worked DXpeditions TL0A in Central African Republic on 15 and 17 meter CW, 7P8EUDXF in Lesotho on 20 CW, and V6Z on Truk Island. It was long path to Micronesia 30-meter CW at 2018Z after a QSO Saturday afternoon on 20 meters.
“After some horribly long skip zones on 40 meters this summer, I find that there is often no skip zone now, or at least very short ones. When the flux drops from the 90/100s range to the 70s, the skip zone gets longer on 20 meters and signal levels go down with the path to Europe closing much earlier. Also, the backscatter signals from the Eastern USA are down about 10 dB, which can easily put the weaker ones into the noise.
“I have been chasing National Parks On The Air units for the 100th anniversary ARRL award. Parks in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states have been very challenging on 20 meters, but I have made quite a few backscatter QSOs with stations using very simple low antennas (many just mobile short verticals). I think I have a park in every state now after a QSO with KL7XK in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska on 20 meter SSB on October 22. Alaska has been tough to work since April.
“The K index went from 5 at 1200Z to 7 at 15Z (strong/G3) today 10/25, and I am still working people (in parks) on 40 meters, mostly to the south. I contacted Algeria, Madagascar, and Central African Republic on 15-meter phone and there are a few Europeans on 20 meters, but signals are down. Europe is working the Far East with big signals on 20.”
Tomas Hood, NW7US, the editor of the CQ’s propagation column, sent this late Thursday night:
"Space Weather is now the focus of a new executive order issued on 13 October 2016, as President Obama takes aim at preparing the nation’s infrastructure for ‘extreme space weather events.’
“Space weather, which covers the Sun-Earth connection and includes the conditions with which radio amateur shortwave communications occur, is a hot area of research and development, and funding. Space weather has the potential to not only affect radio communications but also to affect and disrupt health and safety across the world.
“Issuing an executive order is one way to ensure funding, but it also serves as a reminder that we amateurs are positioned in several ways to participate in the national readiness in the space weather arena: firstly, we are emergency communicators, many of whom are passionate about being prepared to offer their communities with selfless radio communications service, but additionally, being well-educated on space weather science and applications of space weather and radio propagation knowledge. (By the way, for those interested readers, I am still offering a comprehensive space weather and radio propagation course that includes material on forecasting; see http://sunspotwatch.com/swc and http://bit.ly/2e5odRP
“Speaking of space weather: this weekend is the 2016 CQ WW SSB contest. I expect some improvement of geomagnetic conditions by the end of the contest period. I don’t think conditions will improve more than offering fair propagation: the sunspot count is low, and the ionosphere needs time to recover from the degradation caused by the constant bombardment of the solar wind over the last few days. Looking further out, I expect better conditions next month for the CQ WW CW contest weekend.”
As mentioned above, this weekend is the CQ World-Wide SSB DX Contest. Check out the rules at http://www.cqww.com/ .
And don’t ignore this:
Page all the way to the bottom for latest readings. The .pdf files are the ones you want.
Note you can use this to see hourly changes in foF2 values. This shows MUF (Maximum Usable Frequency) for the ionosphere directly above the points on the map.
See a couple of articles about HF intruders:
For more information concerning radio propagation, see the ARRL Technical Information Service at http://arrl.org/propagation-of-rf-signals. For an explanation of the 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 October 20 through 26 were 16, 29, 27, 14, 13, 17, and 15, with a mean of 18.7. 10.7 cm flux was 74.7, 77.8, 77.5, 76.9, 75.3, 77.8, and 78, with a mean of 76.9. Estimated planetary A indices were 3, 2, 6, 9, 16, 60, and 46, with a mean of 20.3. Estimated mid-latitude A indices were 5, 2, 5, 18, 17, 39, and 31, with a mean of 16.7.
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