On 29 Oct 2007 at 21:46, Alan Melia wrote:

> Hi John yes a Coronal hole flow shock at around 1800-2100z period
> pushed the Kp up to 5 which is enough to give you a display up there.
> The radio effects will probably not be felt until tomorrow night when
> things may be down a bit. The Dst index is only down to -35nT at
> present but it is probably still dropping. Anyone watching overnight
> may find the pre-dawn period is not as good as it is usually.

Maybe Alan can explain why we get these auroras and high K indexes at 
the sunspot minimum when the sun spot count and solar flux have been 
at rock bottom for weeks on end?

Just checked, sunspot number still at 0, solar flux still at 67. A 
index (effectively yesterday's figure) for Kiel was 22 and K is 
currently 3 though has dropped from the earlier 5 figure.

But why, and also why has there been an unusual sporadic E opening 
all weekend on 10m, which is most unusual in October. The guys 
playing in CQWW this weekend had a ball! I managed a QSO with C52C in 
the Gambia yesterday afternoon on 10m with my 5W.

What is producing these effects. Doesn't seem to be anything to do 
with the sun as all is stonely quiet there and certainly nothing to 
produce huge auroras? Always thought solar weather was a black art 
(and in this case BLACK seems to be the key word!).

By the way I gave both John GM4SLV and Ray GI3PDN calls last night 
but nil response so it looks like my qrpp ain't getting that far. 
Signals seemed nothing out of the usual, normal peaking 589 with deep 
QSB to noise level at times, I have certainly heard both John and Ray 
at better signals so not convinced aurora or not it was affecting 
500kHz (certainly no auroral tones).

Will very shortly be reconfiguring my vertical back to its Top Band 
configuration for the winter season so will be back in the spring if 
we still have NOVs.

73 Dave G3YMC

http://www.davesergeant.com