[DX-NEWS] ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA
SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA ZCZC AP15 QST de W1AW Propagation Forecast Bulletin 15 ARLP015 From Tad Cook, K7RA Seattle, WA April 13, 2012 To all radio amateurs SB PROP ARL ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA The bulletin comes to you today from Olympia, Washington, where K7RA is on a fortnight road trip down the West Coast. Solar activity took a serious nosedive this week, with average daily sunspot numbers dropping to a value less than half the previous week's average, down nearly 43 points to 32.6. Solar flux values were also off, down nearly 12 points to 95.9. The low point for sunspot numbers was April 9 and 10, with the daily sunspot number at 24 for both days. But subsequently we witnessed a rise, hitting 28 and 50 on April 11 and 12. The current prediction shows solar flux at 95 on April 13 to 19, then suddenly jumping to 105 on April 20 and 21, 110 on April 22 to 25, then 105 on April 26 to 28, 100 on April 29 and 30 and 95 on May 1 to 9. Predicted planetary A index is an unsettled 18 on April 13, 12 on April 14, 10 and 8 on April 15 and 16, 5 on April 17 to 23, 10 and 8 on April 24 and 25, 5 on April 26 to 29, 8 on April 30, and 5 on May 1 to 7. This is an improvement from yesterday's forecast, which had solar flux at 90 for the next few days. But you can keep up with the daily revisions at http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/forecasts/45DF.html. If you checked http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/latest/DGD.txt or http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/indices/quar_DGD.txt recently, you may have noticed missing geomagnetic mid-latitude K indices from Fredericksburg, Virginia on April 7 to 9. They had a computer issue, and that data is lost forever. So the mid-latitude A index shown in this bulletin for those days is the author's very rough and unscientific wild guess. Check http://earthsky.org/space/frank-hill-sees-future-sunspot-drop-no-new-ice-age for an interesting article on helioseismology and the next solar cycle. At http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/nrl-fesearchers-discover-new-solar-feature# check out an interesting article from the Naval Research Laboratory about coronal cells. See a similar article on the same subject at http://scienceblog.com/53190/sdo-and-stereo-spot-something-new-on-the-sun/. Check out an internet connected Software Defined Radio in Walla Walla, Washington at http://outside.wallawalla.edu:8901/. I've just been listening to 40 meter CW, and with a mouse click you can select 20 meters also. This can support multiple simultaneous users tuning independently. Thanks to KD7PAJ for this. Got this report on April 5 from WA9YSD, The Kite Flier's Radio Club: Today around 1730 UTC I was listening to some week state side CW signals on 40 meters. I heard this strange QSB on the signal and noticed the noise floor had QSB as well. So I switch to 17 meters and observed more QSB on the background noise. I then went to spaceweather.com and saw that the CME ejection was late or missed us. Guess it was just late because I was amazed on hearing it hit us. If you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers, email the author at, k...@arrl.net. For more information concerning radio propagation, see the ARRL Technical Information Service web page 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. Find more good information and tutorials on propagation at http://myplace.frontier.com/~k9la/. 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 April 5 through 11 were 50, 39, 38, 25, 24, 24, and 28, with a mean of 32.6. 10.7 cm flux was 100.9, 97.4, 98.5, 93.3, 94.5, 93.3, and 93.4, with a mean of 95.9. Estimated planetary A indices were 13, 4, 10, 5, 4, 8, and 5, with a mean of 7. Estimated mid-latitude A indices were 11, 3, 6, 3, 2, 6, and 5, with a mean of 5.1. /EX --- To unsubscribe or subscribe to this list. Please send a message to imail...@njdxa.org In the message body put either unsubscribe dx-news or subscribe dx-news This is the DX-NEWS reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org ---
[DX-NEWS] ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA
SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA ZCZC AP15 QST de W1AW Propagation Forecast Bulletin 15 ARLP015 From Tad Cook, K7RA Seattle, WA April 15, 2011 To all radio amateurs SB PROP ARL ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA The daily sunspot number reached a new high for Solar Cycle 24 on Wednesday, April 13, 2011, when it hit 153. I looked back over this calendar year, and saw that the previous high was 137 on March 8, 2011, 16 points lower than Wednesday. That week was reported in our Propagation Forecast Bulletin ARLP010 (see http://snurl.com/27snys), which said, The last time the daily sunspot number was higher than this was July 7, 2005, when it was 149. I knew I would have to inspect sunspot numbers prior to that date to find something higher, which would be on the after-the-peak down-side of Solar Cycle 23. I went to the http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/indices/old_indices/2005_DSD.txt link and only had to look two days earlier to July 5, 2005, when it was 181. In fact, the day prior to that was even higher, 192. If you look at that table, you can see that around the end of June and early July 2005 the Sun produced a good burst of activity on Cycle 23's down side. You can read a bulletin from early July 2005 at http://snurl.com/27snzj. Apparently at that time we must have assumed that we were already near a low point in the sunspot cycle, but did not know that five years later we would still be waiting for a significant increase in sunspot activity. The bulletin mentions this was the most activity seen since November 26, 2003. The average sunspot number for the past week rose 21.6 points, from 68.3 to 89.9. Average daily solar flux declined though, by 2.6 points to 109.2. Eight new sunspot groups emerged this week. There was one new group on April 7, two more on April 8, another new one on April 11, two more on April 12, and another new group on Wednesday, April 13, and yet another on April 14. Predicted solar flux values from NOAA/USAF for the near term have increased since the forecast in the ARRL Letter on Thursday. Predicted solar flux is 125 and 128 on April 15-16, 130 on April 17-19, and 135 on April 20-21 and 115 on April 22-23. Planetary A index for the same period is predicted to be 5 on April 15-17, 7 and 10 on April 18-19, and 5 on April 20-27. Geophysical Institute Prague predicts quiet geomagnetic conditions April 15-17, quiet to unsettled April 18, active conditions April 19, and unsettled conditions April 20-21. On April 12 a solar wind stream hit Earth, causing aurora to be visible across the northern tier states in the U.S. The high latitude College A index hit 39, and planetary A index was 23. The next period of higher geomagnetic activity predicted by NOAA/USAF is April 28-29, with a planetary A index of 12 and 15. Jon Jones, N0JK of Wichita, Kansas reports, I heard OA4TT (Peru) on 50.135 MHz on April 4 at 2020z. KN5O in LA had OA4TT in strong, was weak for me. Perhaps direct F2 to the Gulf Coast then weak Es on to KS. KN5O is on my great circle bearing to Peru. Jeff Hartley, N8II of Shepherdstown, West Virginia reports, There have been plenty of recent propagation surprises. Last Friday, April 8, K3SWZ near Harrisburg, PA reported to me working DU9RG on 10 meter SSB at 2348z. Sunset here was 2343Z. I didn't find Robin, but did work first VK6 of Cycle 24 on 10 meters, VK6DU on SSB around 2350z. There were several other eastern VKs and ZLs with good signals on 10 around the same time. I have worked 5N7M around 2300z on 10 CW and he is frequently on 10 and 12 meters very late for him right around the bottom of the band. I heard him as late as 0044z with a good signal on 12 meters last night, then he went down to the bottom of 15 CW around 0100z. 5M2TT (Liberia) was running a big pile-up on 17 meters SSB around z and was worked on Monday around 2330z on both 10 meters phone and CW. 15 has been regularly open to JA in our evenings this week and was still open at 0110z last night. Earlier in the week I had a 'run' of JAs on 15 CW around 2330z with signals up to S9, not an every day event for this QTH with about the poorest prop to JA in the USA (beam heading is 330). To Japan, Jeff is over 6,800 miles. From K7RA in Seattle it is about 4,900 miles at 300 degrees. Dick Grubb, W0QM of Boulder, Colorado suggested that in addition to the STEREO web site at http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/, another view is at http://snurl.com/27so8j. This image shows the same data that are displayed at the first site, but flattened out instead of the spinning globe. If you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers, email the author at, k...@arrl.net. For more information concerning radio propagation, see the ARRL Technical Information Service web page 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
[DX-NEWS] ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA
SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA ZCZC AP15 QST de W1AW Propagation Forecast Bulletin 15 ARLP015 From Tad Cook, K7RA Seattle, WA April 16, 2010 To all radio amateurs SB PROP ARL ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA Weakened sunspots faded this week, and we were buffeted with more geomagnetic instability, but without the dramatic geomagnetic storms of the previous week. Average daily sunspot numbers fell more than 20 points to 12.1, and average solar flux dropped nearly three points to 75.1. April 11 saw no sunspots, with group 1061 appearing April 5-10, and sunspot group 1062 showing April 12-14. By Thursday group 1062 was gone, and we may see still more days without sunspots. Predicted solar flux for April 16-24 is 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 80 and 80. Predicted planetary A index for those same days is 5, 7, 12, 8, 7, 8, 5, 5 and 5. Geophysical Institute Prague predicts quiet conditions for April 16, quiet to unsettled April 17, active conditions April 18, quiet to unsettled April 19, quiet April 20-21, and quiet to unsettled April 22. The new ARRL web site is up, and the links to propagation information appearing at the end of each weekly bulletin have changed. See the links toward the end of this bulletin. Carl Luetzelschwab, K9LA, had comments about Jim Secan's observations in last week's propagation forecast bulletin ARLP014. Carl writes, Your statement about your discussion with Jim Secan in your last bulletin is really two issues. Once you sort those out and understand them, you'll see that I totally agree with Jim. I can't speak for anyone else, though. Issue 1 - Due to the daily variation of the ionosphere, our model of it was developed based on the correlation between the smoothed sunspot number and monthly median ionospheric parameters. This gives us a statistical model of the ionosphere over a month's time frame. Unfortunately it's not a real-time model. Because of the high correlation between the smoothed sunspot number and the smoothed solar flux, either index can be used to properly use our prediction software. This is what I've always preached - that you should use a smoothed solar index (not that it matters, but I prefer smoothed sunspot number for historical reasons), and understand that the results are statistical in nature over a month's time frame. This is how the developers of our predictions intended them to be used. Issue 2 - Jim is trying to derive a solar index that represents what the ionosphere is doing real-time by forcing the model of the ionosphere to agree with a bunch of ionosondes. His results indicate that the average of solar flux over the last 7 days works best to give the least error. So the difference in the two issues is the time frame being used. Issue one is a long-term effort (over one month) to correlate a solar index to data from one ionosonde, and issue two is a short-term effort (daily, hourly) to correlate a solar index to data from many widely separated ionosondes that don't agree very well with each other at the same time of day. Steve Wamback, KK2W of Angola, New York wrote, I just wanted to report very strange 10 meter propagation conditions on Sunday Evening at 10:18 Local EDT (GMT Monday 02:18Z) 2 hours past my local sunset. I just happened to tune through the 10 meter band by chance as I occasionally do. I heard James, KH6CB in QSO. Tuning further, 28.4 MHz, I heard VK4TJF (also James) just finishing a QSO so I threw in my call sign with my 100 watts and G5RV. He heard me and we exchanged 5x6 reports and a short QSO. Signals on the band persisted for about a half hour then dissipated. I find night time 10 meter openings to be extremely rare. Worked a PJ4 after dark once during a December contest. Meteor scatter? That is odd propagation. Perhaps multi-hop sporadic-E? The path is over 9,000 miles. Check out the longest QRZ.com listing I've ever seen, which happens to be Steve's at, http://www.qrz.com/db/kk2w. If you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers, email the author at, k...@arrl.net. For more information concerning radio propagation, see the ARRL Technical Information Service web page 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. 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 April 8 through 14 were 23, 11, 11, 0, 14, 14, and 12 with a mean of 12.1. 10.7 cm flux was 75.7, 76, 75, 74.6, 74.5, 74.9 and 75.1 with a mean of 75.1. Estimated planetary A indices were 11, 6, 3, 8, 22, 3 and 9 with a mean of 8.9. Estimated mid-latitude A indices were 9, 4, 3, 8, 18, 2 and 8 with a
[DX-NEWS] ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA
SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA ZCZC AP15 QST de W1AW Propagation Forecast Bulletin 15 ARLP015 From Tad Cook, K7RA Seattle, WA April 9, 2009 To all radio amateurs SB PROP ARL ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA Today the bulletin is out on Thursday, April 9, because ARRL Headquarters is closed tomorrow on the Good Friday holiday. Just as we reported in the last three bulletins, again there were no sunspots this week. In this time of the quiet Sun, Spaceweather.com has a new feature keeping track of all these days with no spots. On the left side of the page at http://www.spaceweather.com below the image of the Sun and the current daily sunspot number, it says New: Spotless Days. Early on April 9 it says Current Stretch: 14 days, 2009 total: 89 days (87%), Since 2004: 597 days, Typical Solar Min: 485 days. But if we show no spots in this bulletin plus the past three, that accounts for at least 28 days, so why do the new Spotless Days numbers say it has been 14 spotless days since the last sunspot? The last run of sunspots we show is over two days, March 6-7, so through yesterday, April 8, there have been 32 spotless days. If we use the archive feature on the Spaceweather page (look in the upper right side of the page) and go back to March 26, although Spaceweather shows the sunspot number is zero, the text beneath the Daily Sun image says A proto-sunspot is struggling to emerge at the circled location. So if no sunspots emerge later today, April 9, that would account for 14 days since March 26. Recently the 45 day forecast for daily solar flux and planetary A index at http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/forecasts/45DF.html has consistently predicted a solar flux at 70 for every day into the future. The last of these was on March 24. Then on March 25 the prediction was for solar flux at 72 for March 28-31. On March 26 that changed showing solar flux at 72 on March 28 through April 2. On March 27 the solar flux rose to 72 (actually 71.6) and the forecast was the same, but extended the 72 number through April 3. Solar flux has not reached 72 since then, but the March 28 forecast extends the reading of 72 through April 4. On March 29 it extends to April 5, and on March 30 to April 6. On March 31 it extends 72 until April 9, three additional days, but it also shows a new period with a flux of 72, April 23 to May 6. April 1 is the same, but April 2 the flux is dropped to 71 for April 3-9. The April 3 prediction gives up on the slightly higher flux values for the near term, but still predicts 72 for April 23 to May 6. The forecast remains the same until April 7, when the 72 flux for April 23 to May 6 is shortened to April 23-29. So it appears that even these near term predictions for a very small increase in activity are continually revised downward. In the April 8 forecast, it shows the planetary A index for April 9-10 at 15 and 8, then dropping to 5 until April 21. Early on April 9 we are experiencing the effects of a solar wind stream, and planetary K index rose from 3 to 4 at 0300z. Geophysical Institute Prague predicts quiet to unsettled conditions April 10, quiet April 11-14, quiet to unsettled April 15, and unsettled April 16. Robin McNeill, ZL4IG of Invercargill, on New Zealand's South Island has been on HF for about a year, and is another of many new operators I am hearing from who are enjoying HF propagation at the bottom of the sunspot cycle. Robin wrote, With the sunspots and thus the MUF as very low as they are, surely this means that 40 meters is currently as good as it ever gets? In fact, shouldn't 40 meters currently be as good as any band ever gets? I base this assertion on the fact that 40 meters is currently very close to the MUF and, as you note in the last bulletin, there are now few QRN causing solar events. He continues, But that doesn't explain why only a handful of European superstations and very few others find their signals into ZL for hams like me on 40 meters with modest wire antennas and urban QRM, even using the grey line. (That said, I have had a handful of QRP SSB QSOs into Europe recently, though I was working hams who have 3-el beams with presumably low QRM locations- one of them, in fact, seemed surprised I was running 5 watts PEP and not 500 watts PEP output, which surprised us both). Or have I overlooked something? 40 meters is a good band right now, but it isn't as good as any band ever gets. When solar activity returns, the MUF will rise enough to use the 10-20 meter bands, which typically will have less absorption than 40 meters. In addition, the average ham is more likely to have greater antenna efficiency on the higher HF bands. Another factor affecting Robin is that Europe is clear on the other side of the planet from him. For instance, from his location to England is over 19,000 km (over 11,000 miles) away. Yet Los Angles is over 11,500 km (nearly 7,200 miles) from him. If we do some propagation projections using
[DX-NEWS] ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA
SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA ZCZC AP15 QST de W1AW Propagation Forecast Bulletin 15 ARLP015 From Tad Cook, K7RA Seattle, WA April 4, 2008 To all radio amateurs SB PROP ARL ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA The past few days have had very stable geomagnetic conditions. After unsettled to active geomagnetic indicators on March 26-28, conditions quieted down dramatically. Combined with the nearly two-week run of sunspots and the Spring season, this makes for good HF conditions. There were actually three sunspots, beginning on March 23 with the first one and a sunspot number of 14. March 24 and 25 each brought one new spot, and the sunspot number rose to 35 and 52 on those days. Activity peaked between March 26-29, with daily sunspot numbers of 63, 57, 63 and 50. On Thursday April 3, the sunspot number was back to 14 again, as one-by-one, the three spots drifted from view. Today's sunspot number may be back to 0, and it may stay that way until April 18-20. Conditions were remarkably quiet on April 2-3, with many periods having a K index of 0, no matter the latitude. On April 2 near Fairbanks, Alaska the College K index as measured by the local magnetometer was 0 during all eight three-hour periods. Of course, this resulted in an A index for the day of 0. You can go to, http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/indices/DGD.txt to see the K index and A index for the past 30 days, as measured at Fredericksburg, Virginia and Fairbanks, Alaska, and the Planetary index, derived from a number of predominately higher latitude magnetometers. With eight K index measurements per day, times three indexes, times 30 days, you will see over 700 readings. This weekend, April 5-6, will probably see the return of solar wind and associated geomagnetic activity. The predicted Planetary A index for April 4-13 is 10, 15, 15, 12, 12, 12, 12, 10, 5 and 5. Geophysical Institute Prague predicts quiet to unsettled conditions for April 4, active conditions for April 5, unsettled to active April 6, unsettled April 7, unsettled to active April 8, and unsettled April 9-10. Because we now have all sunspot numbers for March, we can take another look at our three-month moving average to try to spot the sunspot minimum. The latest number, 8.4 for February 2008, is the average for all the daily sunspot numbers from January, February and March. We simply add up all the daily sunspot numbers (the sum is 763) and divide by the number of days (91) to get an average of 8.3846, which we approximate as 8.4. May 06 39.7 Jun 06 28.9 Jul 06 23.3 Aug 06 23.5 Sep 06 21.2 Oct 06 24.1 Nov 06 23.1 Dec 06 27.3 Jan 07 22.7 Feb 07 18.5 Mar 07 11.2 Apr 07 12.2 May 07 15.8 Jun 07 18.7 Jul 07 15.4 Aug 07 10.2 Sep 07 5.4 Oct 07 3 Nov 07 6.9 Dec 07 8.1 Jan 08 8.5 Feb 08 8.4 Above it still looks like the sunspot minimum must have occurred in October 2007. For a less-smoothed look, here are the monthly averages: Apr 2007 6.9 May 2007 19.8 Jun 2007 20.7 Jul 2007 15.6 Aug 2007 9.9 Sep 2007 4.8 Oct 2007 1.3 Nov 2007 2.9 Dec 2007 16.3 Jan 2008 5.1 Feb 2008 3.9 Mar 2008 15.9 The monthly averages above still point to October 2007 as the sunspot minimum, but you can see the data is not as smoothed as the three-month averages. Michael Best, WD4DUG sent a link to a NASA article about the recent three sunspots from the last solar cycle. You can read the article at, http://tinyurl.com/2q3loj. Bill Balzarini, KL7BB sent the link http://tinyurl.com/yp7d32 about an ionospheric sounder in Alaska at the HAARP facility. If you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers, email the author at, [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more information concerning radio propagation, see the ARRL Technical Information Service web page at, http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/propagation.html. For a detailed explanation of the numbers used in this bulletin see, http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/k9la-prop.html. An archive of past propagation bulletins is at http://www.arrl.org/w1aw/prop/. Monthly propagation charts between four USA regions and twelve overseas locations are at http://www.arrl.org/qst/propcharts/. Instructions for starting or ending email distribution of this bulletin are at, http://www.arrl.org/w1aw.html#email. Sunspot numbers for March 27 through April 2 were 57, 63, 50, 41, 45, 25, and 24 with a mean of 43.6. 10.7 cm flux was 84.8, 82.9, 82.6, 80.5, 79.2, 77.8, and 75.9 with a mean of 80.5. Estimated planetary A indices were 31, 21, 8, 8, 4, 4 and 1 with a mean of 11. Estimated mid-latitude A indices were 19, 13, 6, 6, 2, 5 and 1, with a mean of 7.4. /EX -- Archives http://www.mail-archive.com/dx-news@njdxa.org THE DXR is sponsored by the North Jersey DX Association. Please visit our website: http://www.njdxa.org/index.php To subscribe/unsubscribe, please send request to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and allow a few hours for acknowledgement
[DX-NEWS] ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA
SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA ZCZC AP15 QST de W1AW Propagation Forecast Bulletin 15 ARLP015 From Tad Cook, K7RA Seattle, WA April 13, 2006 To all radio amateurs SB PROP ARL ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA League headquarters is closed on April 14 for the Good Friday holiday, so the propagation bulletin arrives a day early. Average daily sunspot numbers for the week were up over 12 points to 70.7. What really happened was that for the 7 days of March 30 through April 5, the daily sunspot number at the start of the period was 35, and it rose to 88 by the seventh day. The next day, April 6, was the first day of the reporting period for this bulletin, and on that day the sunspot number rose to 105. The next day it had dropped way down to 65, then 57, then 46 last Sunday, and by Wednesday, April 12 it had risen again to 79. Geomagnetic disturbances accompanied the rising solar activity. A solar wind stream from a coronal hole met the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), which was pointing south, and this leaves Earth vulnerable. On April 9 the mid-latitude A index was 27 and the K index rose to 4 and 5. The planetary A index was 39, with the planetary K index reaching 5 and 6. At 2:30 AM Seattle time on that day my cell phone received an automated call from Spaceweather Phone (see http://spaceweatherphone.com/), alerting me that The Planetary K-index has reached a level of 6. This means that a moderate geomagnetic storm is in progress. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. With this service, users can set it on a web interface for certain hours that it won't call (for those who are interested in a sound sleep). But I just have it set for 24-hour alerts to my wireless phone, and when the cell phone is off at night the alert goes to voicemail. A similar condition to April 9 occurred four days earlier on April 5. But at that time sunspot 865 was still visible. This is the biggest sunspot seen the year, and it has since rotated out of view. Byron Stoeser, W7SWC on April 7 wrote, I am out on 17-meter bicycle mobile almost every day from my Winter QTH in Southern California. It has been so unexpected to go out with the high sun spot numbers the past two days and call CQ for 1/2 an hour with no response and hear very little activity on the band, while a couple of weeks ago I had calls from Japan, and worked the Caribbean and Europe with 0 sun spots. Seems to me there is a lot more to this bottom of the sun spot cycle than just sun spot count. Yes, Byron is correct. Around that time he was experiencing rough conditions from the solar wind. Sunspot numbers were up, but so was geomagnetic activity on April 5. There is a nice peppering of sunspots on the side of the Sun facing us, but they are small. We could see another period of geomagnetic disturbance this Saturday. Planetary A index predicted for the next few days, Thursday, April 13 through Sunday, April 16, is 10, 25, 40 and 25. The Australian Space Weather Agency (see http://www.ips.gov.au/) sent an alert on Tuesday advising of a high speed solar wind from a coronal hole and increased geomagnetic activity on April 15-16. Sunspot numbers may rise again later in the month, perhaps over 100 again. This is most likely around April 24 through May 4. You may sign up for their geophysical warning email alerts at, http://www.ips.gov.au/mailman/listinfo/ips-geo-warning. You can check an archive of their previous warnings at, http://www.ips.gov.au/pipermail/ips-geo-warning/. Michael Mardit, WA2VQW wrote I was in Dominica for the week sandwiched around the SSB-WPX and I operated mostly 30 and 17 meters CW (as J79VQ), while the rest of my team worked the contest. There is absolutely no question that operating the Grayline is the place to be if you want to know if anybody is out there. Sunspots or not, lots of DX shows up during that 'magical' 20 minutes. At other times, just calling CQ for a while will shake the bushes! Michael continues, It seems that many Hams wait for someone else to initiate the call, and as such, nobody is transmitting, hence, a seemingly dead band. The blame is then put on the low sunspot activity for an empty band. Call CQ and be patient, you will be rewarded! VKs were calling me long path in the evening on 30 meters, and the JAs and UA0s were knocking on my door on 17 meters at about the same time. I was running 100 Watts to a vertical wire with 4 radials on the ground. YES being DX on an island certainly helps, but you would never know that I was there if I didn't call CQ. Ron Zond, K3MIY was one of several who wrote to praise the N0HR Propfire plug-in for the Firefox browser, which monitors solar flux and the A and K index when you are on the internet. WA1LOU gave details in his recent Surfin' column on the ARRL web site at, http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2006/03/31/1/. If you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers, email the author at, [EMAIL PROTECTED] For
[DX-NEWS] ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA
SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA ZCZC AP15 QST de W1AW Propagation Forecast Bulletin 15 ARLP015 From Tad Cook, K7RA Seattle, WA April 8, 2004 To all radio amateurs SB PROP ARL ARLP015 ARLP015 Propagation de K7RA This bulletin is going out a day early because ARRL Headquarters will be closed for the Good Friday holiday. Both solar flux values and sunspot numbers dropped this week. Average daily sunspot numbers declined over 46 points and solar flux was down nearly 20. Solar flux is expected to rise over the next couple of days. Predicted solar flux for Thursday through Monday, April 8-12, is 105 for Thursday and Friday, and 100 for Saturday through Monday. Flux values and sunspots should rise again for a few days next week. A coronal mass ejection near sunspot 588 spewed toward earth on April 6. Currently that sunspot is squarely in the center of the solar disk, aimed straight at us. The ejection should hit earth today (April 8). The predicted planetary A index for Thursday through Monday, April 8-12, is 30, 20, 15, 12 and 8. There was a solar wind a couple of days back that caused geomagnetic instability late on April 5th and through most of April 6th. Another solar wind on April 3rd caused similar conditions. For more information concerning propagation and an explanation of the numbers used in this bulletin see the Propagation page on the ARRL Web site at http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/propagation.html . Sunspot numbers for April 1 through 7 were 100, 99, 68, 69, 85, 66 and 57 with a mean of 77.7. 10.7 cm flux was 112.8, 108.1, 107.4, 108.9, 108.7, 101.4 and 98.1, with a mean of 106.5. Estimated planetary A indices were 3, 3, 23, 12, 14, 21 and 10, with a mean of 12.3. /EX -- To post a message the subject must begin with [:dx-news:] (all lower case) and sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] --
