[South Florida DX Association] ARLP018 Propagation de K7RA

[Bill Marx]

SB PROP ARL ARLP018
> ARLP018 Propagation de K7RA
> 
> This was a nice, quiet week with no notable geomagnetic activity.
> In fact, the middle latitude K index was 0 for a 36-hour period
> centered on April 30, and around the same time the high latitude
> college K index was 0 for 51 continuous hours. Average daily sunspot
> numbers were nearly double the previous seven days, rising over 29
> points to 59.7.
> 
> As this bulletin is being written early Friday morning, the IMF is
> pointing south, leaving Earth vulnerable to solar wind. The
> planetary A index reached 5 on Thursday, May 4, and over the weekend
> is predicted at 20, 30, 20 and 12 for May 5-8. Geophysical Institute
> Prague gives a forecast until May 11 of active geomagnetic
> conditions on May 5 and 6, unsettled May 7, quiet to unsettled May
> 8, quiet on May 9, back to unsettled on May 10, and unsettled to
> active on May 11.
> 
> April has ended, so this is a good time to look at average monthly
> sunspot numbers and solar flux for the past year.
> 
> The average daily sunspot numbers for the months April 2005 through
> April 2006 were 41.5, 65.4, 59.8, 68.7, 65.6, 39.2, 13, 32.2, 62.6,
> 26.7, 5.3, 21.3 and 55.2. Average daily solar flux for the same
> months was 85.9, 99.5, 93.7, 96.5, 92.4, 91.9, 76.6, 86.3, 90.8,
> 83.4, 76.5, 75.5 and 88.9.
> 
> Paul Peters, VE7BZ of Cobble Hill, British Columbia wrote in to say
> that conditions around those quiet days last week were fantastic.
> "On April 29, 30 and May 1, the 20 meter band conditions to Europe
> were almost unbelievable they were so good. On April 29 and 30, I
> called CQ once at 0300z and four hours later at 0700z I was still
> working down an endless pileup. Normally for us--living this far
> north--20m phone is usually dead in our evenings, but such was not
> the case recently. These were great nights!"
> 
> Cobble Hill is toward the southern end of Vancouver Island, just
> north of Victoria, and about 50 miles southwest of the city of
> Vancouver.
> 
> Richard Vincent, HS0ZFQ (he is KR7R when in the United States)
> retired from the postal service in Seattle and now lives in Chiang
> Rai in the far north of Thailand, between the borders with Laos and
> Myanmar (Burma). Over those same days at the end of April that VE7BZ
> wrote about, Richard wrote, "I was hearing stateside signals all
> over the place on 20 meter SSB starting about 1300z, which is 8:00
> PM local time. From this end VR2XMT, Charlie Ho in Hong Kong was
> running USA stations and so were a couple of the Russian big guns. I
> had not heard conditions like that since I got on the air here last
> October."
> 
> Richard currently uses a dipole, and has plans to soon put up a
> quad.
> 
> Last week's bulletin mentioned Greg Andracke, W2BEE of Pine Plains,
> in upstate New York, and his experience working Chagos on 30 meters
> early on a Saturday morning in mid-April. Several people wrote in to
> say that this was a normal time to work Chagos via the long path on
> that band. Actually, that is true for many other places in North
> America, but not where Greg is, in the Northeast.
> 
> The people we heard from were all south and west of Greg, although
> checking a propagation prediction program shows that the Southeast
> United States should have a good path as well. Southern California
> around that time on that date would have a very good short path
> opening to Chagos.
> 
> Dale Tongue, AC7NP, currently in El Paso, Texas wrote in to ask
> about sunspot graphs, and where he could find them on the web. For a
> graph of the last year of sunspots, check,
> http://wm7d.net/hamradio/solar/. Also see all recorded sunspot
> cycles back to 1749 at,
> http://wm7d.net/hamradio/solar/historical.shtml.
> 
> A graph of the current sunspot cycle is at,
> http://dawn.sec.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/, and you can compare recent
> cycles at, http://www.dxlc.com/solar/cyclcomp.html.
> 
> You can see http://www.dxlc.com/solar/ for a chart of the past few
> months, and check out the links lower on the page for interesting
> historical data.
> 
> And finally, Thomas Giella, KN4LF of Lakeland, Florida notes that he
> has started a new email listserver for radio propagation. See info
> on subscribing at,
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/radiowavepropagation/.
> 
> If you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers,
> email the author at, k7ra at arrl.net.
> 
> For more information concerning radio propagation and an explanation
> of the numbers used in this bulletin, see the ARRL Technical
> Information Service propagation page at,
> http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/propagation.html. An archive of past
> propagation bulletins is at, http://www.arrl.org/w1aw/prop/.
> 
> Sunspot numbers for April 27 through May 3 were 63, 68, 64, 62, 51,
> 58 and 52 with a mean of 59.7. 10.7 cm flux was 100.7, 100.1, 101.2,
> 99.9, 93.4, 89.4, and 89, with a mean of 96.2. Estimated planetary A
> indices were 5, 12, 3, 1, 2, 4 and 3 with a mean of 4.3. Estimated
> mid-latitude A indices were 3, 10, 2, 0, 2, 4 and 2, with a mean of
> 3.3.
> NNNN
> /EX
> 
> 
>