|
|
|
|
20 October, 2007
Our Sun is still blank. The past week has shown no sunspots, and we will
probably see more of nothing.
Geomagnetic conditions have been very quiet, which means lower absorption
of HF radio signals and lower noise. But this will become more active
in the near future due to a returning solar wind. The planetary A index
for October 19-26 is predicted to be 15, 12, 8, 5, 8, 18, 20 and 25. Things
should settle down during the CQ World Wide DX Phone Contest next weekend.
Geophysical Institute Prague predicts unsettled conditions for October
19-21, quiet to unsettled October 22, quiet conditions October 23, and
unsettled to active October 24-25.
We continue to receive reports from surprised hams that are getting 15
and 10 meter propagation that they don't expect at the bottom of the solar
cycle.
Brian Edward, N2MF of Jamesville, New York worked 3B7C at 1218z on 10
meter CW on September 22. Brian wrote, "This strikes me as unusual
because I'm quite north, in Syracuse NY. I haven't heard much on 10 meters
in years. It was relatively early in our morning, 0818 am. Although Europe
was posting them on the DX internet spots, no other stateside was in there.
They were quite strong at this location, I worked them first call. I believe
this was a single day occurrence, heard them shortly after on 12 meters,
but unfortunately I'm lacking a good antenna on that band."
One thing that definitely helped Brian were his antennas, which you can
see on http://www.qrz.com/n2mf.
He has two 7-element 10 meter Yagis, one aimed on Europe and the top one
at 80 feet is rotatable.
Rodney Vorndam, K9ROD of Rye, Colorado mentioned he hasn't heard any
15 meter openings in a while, but on October 13-14 he worked Spain, Honduras,
Haiti and Virgin Islands on that band.
Steve Doty, KA9OKH of Evansville, Indiana said over the past week, October
11-18, he has had strong signals from East Asia on the low end of 20 meter
CW. Steve hasn't heard Asia in a long time, but even with this extended
period of no sunspots the signals out of Japan and Korea were as high
as 20 db over S9.
Last week's Propagation Forecast Bulletin ARLP042 mentioned a problem
a reader had running W6ELprop under Microsoft's Vista operating system.
There is an easy fix. Our reader's problem was probably with a security
feature in Vista, and the solution is to right-click the W6ELprop installation
file W6ELPropInst270.exe from Windows Explorer, then select the Run as
Administrator option.
We also received a helpful tip from Rex Lint, K1HI of Merrimack, New
Hampshire. Vista isn't compatible with the Help file in W6ELprop, which
has an .hlp extension. To fix this, there is a free patch from Microsoft,
described at,
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607.
We should mention Kangaroo Tabor Software, which produces several very
useful propagation tools. These are shareware which is not totally free,
but the trial versions don't cost anything, and are fully functional.
Check their web site at, http://www.taborsoft.com.
Jim Tabor, KU5S is the author, and he has several distinctive and quite
useful propagation software tools available.
If you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers, email
the author at, k7ra@arrl.net.
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/.
Sunspot numbers for October 11 through 17 were 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 and 0
with a mean of 0. 10.7 cm flux was 68.8, 68.6, 67.6, 67.1, 67.2, 67.1,
and 67.4 with a mean of 67.7. Estimated planetary A indices were 1, 4,
2, 5, 2, 2 and 1 with a mean of 2.4. Estimated mid-latitude A indices
were 0, 3, 2, 3, 1, 1 and 0, with a mean of 1.4.
Source: The
American Radio Relay League
•
DX Spots popup
• All propagation
reports can be found at:
http://www.southgatearc.org/propagation
|
|
|
