HF News
Autumnal HF conditions continue to improve with the odd surprise on the upper HF bands.
With a solar flux around 120, there have been some good HF contacts to be made via FT8 on 10 metres, including VK (Australia), BD (China), and JA (Japan), which were all spotted during the afternoon. These openings have been fleeting, but can easily add to your DXCC score.
Conditions have been variable, with a decreasing solar flux index and periods of geomagnetic disturbance, thanks to emissions from a coronal hole on the Sun. A Kp index of five or more usually means lower MUFs and noisier bands.
But the time of year has helped with Autumnal HF conditions being some of the best. Maximum Usable Frequencies have usually been above 21MHz during daylight hours, with some openings on 24 and 28MHz at times. If you do venture up to 12 or 10 metres, give it some time as openings may be short and fleeting.
This week, DX to be worked includes YJ0CA (Vanuatu), TZ4AM (Mali), XX9TXN (Macao), 3DAOGY (Eswatini), S9R (Sao Tome), C5R (The Gambia) and 5W0ZP (Samoa). Many other entities may also be on after travellers taking part in the weekend’s CQWW SSB contest stay on the air.
Also keep an eye on 40 and 80 metres, which should also be improving as we enter late Autumn. Thirty metres, an overlooked band, may be currently open all night, so it is worth a look.
Next week, NOAA predicts that the SFI will remain around the 95-105 mark. Geomagnetic conditions are predicted to be good all week with a Kp index of two. This may increase to five at the end of the month, so do your DXing early in the week. As always, keep an eye on solarham.com as it only takes one solar flare and associated CME to push the Kp index up.
VHF and up
The middle of last week saw some good daytime rainscatter on 24GHz for those of us fortunate enough to catch it. More active weather fronts are likely to bring spells of heavy rain or showers, which might cause a repeat so keep an eye on the rain maps if you have equipment for the 5.7, 10 and 24GHz bands.
The current spell of unsettled weather is likely to run through much of the coming week and, in typical autumn fashion, some of these storms will be major lows with strong or potentially damaging winds for unsecured aerials.
The recent slight enhancements of the Kp index suggest that we should still keep an eye out for some probably weak auroral activity if the Kp index goes above Kp=5.
On to meteor scatter now and it seems that we have recently seen a top-up of meteor input due to the peak of the Orionid meteor shower, which peaked last Wednesday night. That may have helped the 50MHz Es QSOs on the 17th for some. QSOs were made on FT8 into Iberia, Scandinavia and North Africa where 7T5E was active.
Cloudy weather probably made it difficult to see evidence of the meteors, but meteor scatter on the VHF bands may well reveal the extra activity and hopefully leave some residual meteors for the coming week.
EME now, and Moon declination is now positive and rising to a maximum on Thursday the 29th. Moon windows lengthen and peak Moon elevation is rising. Perigee is on Wednesday the 28th when path losses are at their lowest. 144 MHz sky noise is low, rising to moderate on the 30th.