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HF News
Two large coronal holes on the Sun’s surface have been spraying solar material towards Earth, pushing the Kp index to a high of 4.67.
The solar wind speed has been consistently higher than 500km/s and with a south-pointing interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) the plasma has flooded into Earth’s magnetic field. There have been a few aurora warnings, but these have only been minor.
As a result, the ionosphere has not been too badly affected and daytime MUFs over a 3,000km path have generally remained above 28MHz, with the odd dip towards 24MHz.
Coronal mass ejections have not made an appearance and at the time of writing, there had only been three M-class flares in the past five days.
Meanwhile, the solar flux index fell to the 150s and 160s last week.
Recent HF DX has included the V73WW DXpedition on the Marshall Islands, which has been worked from the UK, including on 40m, 30m and 20m CW. The TX7N DXpedition to Marquesas Island in French Polynesia has just finished. It wasn’t an easy path, but it was worked from the UK on all bands from 12m to 30m, on FT8, CW and SSB.
Next week, NOAA predicts that the SFI could rise a little to be in the range 180-190. Once Earth is free from the effects of the current coronal hole stream, we may expect the Kp index to retreat, perhaps to a maximum of Kp=2.
So DX next week could be quite reasonable, but as always, keep an eye on solarham.com for daily updates.
VHF and up
The lingering high pressure just to the east of the UK is holding weather fronts over western Britain for the time being with any Tropo benefits confined to eastern areas, and being marginal at best.
During the coming week, changes will be slow but gradually a more determined push on the Atlantic fronts may bring them over most areas except the extreme southeast of the country.
This will make rain scatter more accessible although the models suggest the fronts are likely to become weaker, so not especially useful by the time they reach the southeast.
Sporadic-E is in its quiet season now, as are the meteor scatter prospects, with no major showers in attendance until the spring Lyrids in late April.
Perhaps this quieter time is a chance to do some operating housekeeping; for example, updating a list of nearby repeaters and beacons to help you track developing openings. Maybe consider trying a new mode or band.
Learning to use digital modes for meteor scatter or CW are a great opportunity to spend quality time developing the necessary skills. At the end of the day just dive in and have a go; maybe consider joining the increasing numbers trying CW on 2m. Keep in mind that “most people are as bad at Morse as you are”, and only an unfortunate few will not be patient with you.
Moon declination goes negative again on Saturday the 15th and path losses are rising as the Moon moves away to apogee, its furthest point from Earth, on Tuesday the 18th. 144MHz sky noise is low for most of the coming week but goes high for the weekend of Saturday the 22nd.