Mike said
A 'severe solar wind shock' impacted Earth at 1632UTC yesterday.
This resulted in a big aurora, The A Index is 56. This is higher than
early February when VA3LK was getting good signals from DCF.
It will be interesting to see if this causes some good LF conditions.
If it does, it probably shows that the Solar Flare warnings are
useless as this aurora was preceded by 2 C-class and 1 M-class
flares which occur quite frequently.
If good conditions are coming they have not arrived yet. However, it
might be a case that it gets bad before it gets better.
I have been running 72kHz/137kHz cross-band tests with I5TGC. Because
Cesare is running 20mW erp and I am running about 35mW erp on 72kHz
it is a fairly good indication of conditions over a path length of
1150km plus the Alps.
Normally, we see each other but optimum conditions on each band
seldom occur at the same time so we have not made a QSO yet.
Tonight (8/4) was different - not a whisper either way.
I have just checked 137kHz and CFH was inaudible and only just
detectable with Spectran.(It was S9 +20dB when the AMRAD group were
at Nags Head).
However, SM6PXJ was clearly audible calling CQ at 2240UTC - I
couldn't go back to him because my transmitter was set to 72kHz.
Conditions are going to play a crucial role in the success of any
transatlantic test, particularly if high speed CW operation is
contemplated - still, I guess its all been organised.
--
Regards, Peter, G3LDO
<[email protected]>
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