Band conditions have just been horrendous this past week. After my poor showing in the CW SS contest on Saturday, I decided to take a day off on Sunday, so I didn’t even try to get on the air Sunday. When I did finally get back on Monday evening, I found that there had been a coronal mass ejection (CME) and that the shortwave bands were almost completely blacked out.
It was so unusual that I got on our 2m repeater and asked if there was anyone monitoring who could turn on his radio and confirm my observations. Jeff W8SGZ was listening and did indeed find exactly the same thing I did. I could hear just a couple of signals, and I didn’t even try to make any contacts. Tuesday was a little better, and I did manage to eke out a few contacts, but the band was still very noisy.
Thursday, things seemed to be a bit better, and I made a few good contacts, although in the evening, the band started acting a bit funny again. I had a QSO with W4MQC in MA, and usually we have a pretty good QSO with strong signals. Last night, the QSO started out well, but Alan noted that the band had been up and down. Sure enough, after a few exchanges, the band changed again, and we had to cut it short.
This morning, conditions were lousy again. Several of the propagation websites (see below) reported that there had been another CME on November 10 and that we’d be feeling the effects on November 12. Well, they were certainly right about that. Fortunately, they also forecast quieter conditions for the weekend.
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