It looks as though solar activity is picking up, and with that propagation on the HF bands. The ARRL Letter reports:
Tad “Somewhere the Sun is shining” Cook, K7RA, reports: Compared to the uneventful past few years, sunspot activity was truly remarkable this week. The daily sunspot number for September 16 was 173. We haven’t see numbers like this in more than six years, when the sunspot number was 181, way back on July 5, 2005 in Solar Cycle 23. The solar flux reached 150.1 on September 18. Just six months ago it was slightly higher, 153 on March 7 and 155 on March 8, but prior to that the only higher number was 157.3 on August 22, 2005, about 7 weeks after the sunspot number of 181. Currently, the solar flux and planetary A index forecast from USAF/NOAA calls for solar flux of 144 on September 22-23, 140 on September 24-25, 145 on September 26-28, 130 on September 29 through October 1, and 135 on October 2-5. The planetary A index is predicted at 5 on September 22-24, 8 on September 25, 5, 8, 5, 5, 15 and 8 on September 26 through October 1, and 5 on October 2-7. Look for more information on the ARRL website on Friday, September 23. For more information concerning radio propagation, visit the ARRL Technical Information Service Propagation page.
On Tuesday, I worked a guy on 40m, and he reported that 10m was wide open all day. Time for some DX!
Guess it’s time to dig my 10m mobile rig back out of the closet! It was last installed two cars ago.
Wow, for the first time ever, I heard signals on 12m and 10m. Time to double check the rotatable dipole and get to work!
Indeed it is time to dig out that 10m rig. Down at the museum today, we were booming in to Europe.
Good evening Dan, I can remember setting up an FT-857 along with a Miracle whip on my bed side table. I was able to PSK into Europe while my wife was watching TV!!! Seems those days are going to be returning.