[Great-River-DX] 6 meter dx opening on Monday

[Jay Hainline]

I thought I would send to the group a summary of what took place on Monday 
on 6 meters. It shows just how much you can benefit if you pay attention to 
conditions and what you can work.

On Saturday Sept. 24, a large sunspot group produced a long duration M7.1 
class solar flare that produced a Coronal Mass Ejection out from the sun and 
headed towards Earth. Sometime around 1200z Monday, the CME impacted Earth 
with the solar wind increasing over 700 km/s at its peak. This caused major 
geomagnetic storming on Earth with aurora conditions during the day.

I had arrived home from work a little after 2015z and started monitoring 6 
meters and the ON4KST 6 meter chat. 6 meter stations in New England and 
across the upper Midwest had been reporting widespread aurora. Sometime 
around 2100z, the aurora began to die off. From past experience, I knew to 
have the beam looking south as these big CME's tend to bend the earths 
magnetic field enough to place what would normally be TEP type propagation 
further north than usual. It was not long before I started to hear 9Y4D in 
Trinidad & Tobago come up out of the noise on 50.110. Soon he was S9 and 
worked easily at 2118z.

We were off to the races! Tuning around I heard 9Y4VU and worked him easily 
at 2128z. Again S9 signals. I continued to tune around and heard beacons 
from OA4TT/b in grid FH16 and HK6FRC/b in FJ37. Both loud.

Then YV5ESN popped up on 50.110 and was worked at 2138z.

The last station worked was HC1HC at 2157z who began cqing on CW and I think 
I was his first qso. What a pile up after that! The cw backscatter sounded 
like 20 meters.

It was not long before it was all done and over with. Only other dx heard 
was NP4A on backscatter peaking around 200 deg. azimuth. Then it all faded 
away.

That is how these CME's work. It pays to go to web sites such as 
spaceweather.com and another favorite www.solarham.com to get the latest 
info on what the sun is doing. The ON4KST chat page is huge for real time 
reports of what is being heard and worked on 6 meters.

73 and good dx.

Jay Hainline KA9CFD
Colchester, IL EN40om