I’ve seen some reports recently from amateur radio operators around the world that band conditions are improving. Certainly on the higher frequency bands (20m and up) there seems to be some excitement as more DX is worked when this just wasn’t possible in 2009.
Spaceweather.com seems to bear this out. The calculated sunspot number is currently 40 which is as high as I’ve seen it in a long time. Bear in mind that this is about 15 times more than the number of actual visible sunspots (which today stands at three, sunspots 1051, 1052 and 1053). The data also shows that 2010 so far has only 3% spotless days versus 2009 which had over 70% of days with no sunspots.
It does very much look like propagation and band conditions are slowly climbing out of the doldrums as cycle 24 picks up.
Dean Amateur Radio, Totally random propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sunspots
Well that’s it - January 2010 is no more. Over, done, finished! Blink and you would have missed it. It’s now February the 1st and before you know it winter will recede and give way to spring.
So, what did January 2010 give us? Not a lot to be fair. I was QRT for the whole of the month and my only forays onto the bands were occasional listens to 20m and 40m where I heard little of interest. I really do need something to re-enthuse me. I keep thinking I should get back to working more PSK31 on 20m but so far I haven’t even got round to doing that. I’ll hope to address that during February.
January 2010 will likely be most remembered for the cold snap and the accompanying snow and ice that brought the UK to a near standstill. That is now thankfully passed and not to be repeated anytime soon with a bit of luck. Roll on warmer weather, longer days and improving HF conditions as cycle 24 starts to gather momentum.
Dean Amateur Radio, Blog, Life..., Totally random 2010, antenna, January, QRT, Solar Cycle 24
From SpaceWeather.com:
Two sunspots (1032/1033) are emerging in the sun’s northern hemisphere. Both are members of new Solar Cycle 24. Sunspot 1032 appears to be the reincarnation of old sunspot 1029.
Dean Amateur Radio, Blog Solar Cycle 24, sunspots
The sun is showing signs of life. Over the weekend, sunspot 1029 emerged and it is crackling with B and C class solar flares.
The sunspot’s magnetic polarity identifies it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24. If it continues to grow at this rate, sunspot 1029 could soon become the biggest sunspot of 2009.
This and more at SpaceWeather.com.
Dean Amateur Radio, Totally random contest, propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sunspot
Small but significant, sunspot 1028 of cycle 24 is barely visible in the upper left quadrant of the solar disk but this is the sunspot that has broken a run of 18 consecutive days without any sunspots.
Now if only there could be a few more sunspots emerge over the next few days in the run up to the 2009 CQ World Wide DX SSB contest this weekend…
Dean Amateur Radio, Totally random contest, propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sunspot
This in a report yesterday (Wed 14th Oct 2009) at SpaceWeather.com entitled ‘Deep Quiet’. Today will be the 14th such day and there is no sign at the moment of when this streak might be broken.
So far this year, the sun has been spotless 79% of the time, topping the 73% mark recorded in 2008. Cycle 24 seems to be a long time coming and there have been a few false dawns. Long after many forecasters thought that solar minimum would be finished, the quiet is not only continuing, but actually deepening. So much so that some are now asking “are sunspots gone for good?”, as this article on the NASA website explains.
Opinion is divided - those suggesting a decline say that “sunspot magnetic fields are dropping by about 50 gauss per year, if we extrapolate this trend into the future, sunspots could completely vanish around the year 2015″ whereas those with a more positive outlook say that “other indications of solar activity suggest that sunspots must return in earnest within the next year.”
I for one am hoping that the optimists are proved to be correct in their assessment rather than those predicting a gradual decline. Shortwave propagation is much improved when there are lots of sunspots and those of us with modest antennas really need all the help we can get!
Dean Amateur Radio, Totally random antenna, propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sunspot
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From SpaceWeather.com…[2009-09-01]
“SUNSPOT 1025: A new sunspot emerged yesterday and interrupted a 51-day string of blank suns. It wasn’t much of an interruption. Sunspot 1025 is small and may already be fading away.”
That might explain the CQ fatigue I’ve been reporting!
A massive 51 days without any hint of a sunspot - that’s quite a stretch. It goes a long way towards explaining why conditions have been so poor recently on HF.
Indications are that this could be just another false dawn for cycle 24 but let’s hope that it does perk up soon!
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some actual sunspots *
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* Just to clarify, this image does not show sunspot 1025. Sunspot 1025 was much smaller than the sunspots shown here.
Dean Amateur Radio, Pictures propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sunspot
I’m not a serious contester but I do enjoy taking advantage of high levels of activity on the bands during contests to check conditions, see how well my antenna is performing, work a few stations and hopefully log a few new ones. To those ends I spent a few hours at the radio over this past weekend during the Worked All Europe (WAE) CW contest. For those who don’t know, this is a contest where Europe works the world and the world works Europe - this means that as a European station I could only work stations outside Europe.
My operating was split over both Saturday and Sunday and my first thoughts on Saturday were that conditions were really not very good. Few stations were heard outside Europe in countries other than USA, Canada and Asiatic Russia, three countries with a high number of high power stations with good antennas. It was much the same on Sunday although it did seem to me that conditions were slightly better than Saturday.
Over the two days of the contest more than two thirds of stations I worked were from either the USA or Canada, several were from Asiatic Russia and I worked 2 stations from each of Cyprus and Uruguay. I also worked a single station in each of Georgia and Kazakhstan.
Stations heard but not worked were from Japan (several), China (2), Brazil (4), Argentina and Cuba (1 each) - of these China would have been a new one for me but despite calling one particularly loud station on Saturday for several minutes he just wasn’t hearing me. This was probably due to the fact I could only hear him because he was running high power into a decent antenna and my antenna wasn’t radiating my 80 watts of CW very well. Oh…and of course the conditions weren’t great!
All in all it was quite a disappointing event due to the lack of variety in DX stations heard and worked. Conditions weren’t great and it was hard work getting through to many stations with my modest power output and compromise antenna. Sun spot cycle 24 - where are you?
Dean Amateur Radio antenna, contest, CW, propagation, Solar Cycle 24, sun spot, WAE
My results in the recent WPX contest certainly suggest that is indeed the case. A new antenna for just £2.99 - how could that be?
To be perfectly honest it’s not an entirely new antenna. It’s probably about 90% of the wire previously used in a sloper configuration to which I have added an 8ft clothes line prop/pole. The clothes line prop is lashed to the back fence at the point where the old antenna was attached to the fence, only now the end of the antenna is some 7ft highter than before with corresponding increases along it’s length, all the way up to the shack window at about 25ft.
The antenna wire, end fed at the top, is now shorter by about 10ft and there are some issues on 40m where I need to limit power to no more than 40 watts. However, on 30m and above it is working fine. The SEM TranZmatch (z-match tuner) gives good matches on all bands 30m-10m and results on 30m and 20m are particularly encouraging (which was a great relief having undertaken this work the afternoon before the WPX CW contest started where 20m would be the band on which my efforts were concentrated). A few contacts were possible on 15m but conditions weren’t great so I’m reserving judgement on the 17/15/12 and 10m bands until they start to open up as cycle 24 develops and propagation improves.
So, for a sum total of £2.99 and a little effort, it seems I have a new, improved antenna that, for now at least, has renewed my enthusiasm for the hobby that was previously a little bit flat based on recent experiences with the previous form of the antenna. It’s still a seriously compromised setup but given the limited possibilities at my location, as long as it works, it’ll do for now!
Dean Amateur Radio antenna, propagation, SEM TranZmatch, Solar Cycle 24, z-match