As of Thursday 11 September, it looked like someone had thrown a switch on the Sun to turn off all new sunspots! Unless there is a big change, there will be no sunspots visible on the Sun’s surface today, the 14 September. It is clear that we are no longer at solar maximum. A bigger […]

Last week’s aurora may have come as a bit of a surprise! The propagation segment for GB2RS is usually written on a Thursday, but the aurora was sparked by a solar flare that took place two days later, at 2002UTC on the 30 August. As we don’t have a crystal ball we couldn’t have predicted […]

This week saw a change in HF propagation with a perceptible move towards more autumnal conditions. The 10 and 12m bands have started opening up to the USA, at least on FT8. As we move into September this will improve further. Also, as we head towards the autumnal equinox, we can expect better conditions on […]

Last week was relatively good from an HF propagation standpoint, with only a few periods with an elevated Kp index thanks to a high-speed solar wind stream from a coronal hole. The Kp index hit 4.67 on the 19 August and 4 again on the 20 August due to the solar wind hitting earth at […]