Over the last week we have had a fair sprinkling of sunspots, along with some enormous coronal holes, including one almost rectangular hole. Coronal holes are lower energy areas on the Sun with open magnetic field lines, allowing solar plasma to flow out. Geomagnetic conditions have mainly been settled, with the Kp index hitting a […]

After last weekend’s HF disruption, the latter half of the week was fairly settled. Last weekend, the Kp index rose to 7, sparking visible aurora around the UK. The disruption continued, on and off, until Tuesday, 24 March when the Kp index fell below 3 again. The disruption was caused by a solar wind stream […]

Last weekend’s Commonwealth Contest got off to a bad start, thanks to a Kp index of 6 that really affected the ionosphere. As a result, HF conditions were not good with the maximum useable frequency over a 3,000km path below 21MHz until 1700UTC. Luckily, things improved a little on Sunday but overall scores were down compared […]

There has been plenty to work on the HF bands this past week. 3Y0K on Bouvet Island is still attracting a lot of radio amateurs but there is also 8Q7ZW on the Maldives and German group J51A on Guinea-Bissau to get your attention. DXpeditions to look out for next week include TX5EU from the Austral […]