Hi all, as judged by Steve's plots of DCF39 conditions are still slowly
improving. Last nights plot shows good periods at medium levels, with some
deep troughs. The peak levels are 15dB higher than the levels a couple of
weeks back, but are still nearly 10dB short of the early January highs. The
geomagnetic storm just after mid-night (Kp=5) was the one predicted by NOAA
and Spaceweather and due to a "geoeffective" coronal hole. The problem for
Lawrence is that the effect of this would be almost instantaneous on polar
paths whereas it will take another two to three days to depress the lower
latitude paths (DCF39 > W3EEE). The end effect at lower latitudes should be
to drag out the recovery period. We must remember that there was a period of
nearly a month of low Kp's before the January "highs". From memory I think
the previous geomag storm was around the 28th Nov.

Unfortunately todays storm will start to depress night-time paths again in
time for the weekend GM "expeditions". Hopefully it will be accompanied by
better day-time propagation as a slight consolation.

Cheers de Alan G3NYK
[email protected]