Solar Cycle 25 Has Started!
Some good news- Solar Cycle 25 Has Started!
What this means, for the non-commo folks, is that HF communications are gradually going to become easier has there’s more activity from the Sun. As I cover in the RTO Course, HF works by charging the ions in the upper layers atmosphere, creating a reflective effect, which propagates your signals. The sun has winters and summers too, and they generally follow an 11 year cycle. The less solar activity? The worse the conditions. The more solar activities, the better your signals.
So this is good news, and its going to make all of us low power operation guys a lot happier in the near future.
Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!
4 Comments
Comments are closed.
5
Here is a link to an excellent, free presentation on radio wave propagation
https://www.meted.ucar.edu/training_module.php?id=1394&tab=03#.XR0BQ-tOmxB
Newer operator here, having gotten started in HF right towards the end of the minimum (General ticket obtained in 2018). I’ve come to rely on this website which shows daily band conditions:
http://www.hamqsl.com/solar.html
While not perfect (there can be other issues which impact propagation) I place a lot of weight on the SFI (Solar Flux Index) value – anything over 70 and I typically have no issues hitting West coast on 20 and 40 meters – anything less and it is dicey. The best I’ve seen (due to minimum) has been 73, the worst – 67. Given how great propagation seems when in the 70s, I’m really looking forward to what the bands will be like when things really pick back up in the new cycle! I’ve gotten to checking the band conditions daily when I check the weather. The widgets on this site are incorporated into many other HAM related web pages, I usually monitor through QRZ.net, but have posted the link to the original developers site for credit for his efforts.
I have his widget in the sidebar of this site as well as the Brushbeater blog. Kinda like a weather report, but a solar one. :)
Ham isn’t an acronym, by the way, its a nickname for ‘ham fisted operators’ referencing CW / Morse code operators back in the early days of radio.