Latest Propagation News

[Steve - K4HX]

Looks like we're in a second peak of sunspots. Let's hope it continues. Ten meters was hot today. I made a bunch of contacts including a Russian and a Ukrainian station. Those are not often heard at my QTH. I also had 5 QSOs on FM with Europeans, including a nice half hour chat with a chap in Northern Ireland. Conditions were DFQ the entire time.

From the latest ARRL Prop Bulletin:

NASA has a new prediction for the current solar cycle, slightly
revised from a month earlier. The current version updated March 3,
2014 is here:
 
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml
 
The revision is a smoothed sunspot peak of 69 late last summer
(2013) from 67 earlier in the same summer in the report a month
earlier. These numbers are only recently known because the smoothed
sunspot number uses a whole year of data. If activity continues to
increase, then it will drag this smoothed maximum further out,
perhaps to early this year. But there definitely is a strong second
peak happening now, stronger than the first.
 
The average of daily sunspot numbers for February 2014 was the
highest of the current solar cycle at 174.6. In fact, the last time
it was higher was the month of September 2002, when it was 206.4.
 
We've been running our own smoothed 3-month moving average of
sunspot numbers, and now that February is over we know the average
for the three months centered on January 2014: 138.5.  This is also
a high for this solar cycle. You may recall that this cycle seemed
to have an earlier peak based on this moving average toward the end
of 2011, when the averages centered on September through December
2011 were 98.6, 118.8, 118.6 and 110. Compare that to this most
recent peak, with these 3 month averages centered on August 2013
through January 2014: 77.4, 91.2, 102.9, 123.7, 123.3, and 138.5
mentioned earlier.
 
Here is an article from a reliable source noting this second peak is
larger than the first, and that this slow cycle may have a much
broader peak than earlier cycles:
 
http://sidc.oma.be/news/240/welcome.html
 

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

I was out cleaning up some gear for the upcoming Raleigh hamfest and had a receiver on 10. Sometime are 4:30-5PM I heard a G-something UK station working a W7/VE in AZ. The UK op's name was Howarth, have seen him mentioned previously. He wasn't terribly strong, maybe 5x5 at his best, but the fact that I was hearing him at all in mid-late afternoon on a dipole was pretty amazing!

Here's hoping for a large and sustained second peak.

[Steve - K4HX]

Two different predictions for the rest of 2014. Here's hoping for the one of the right!

[KL7OF]

Iceland, France, austria, then..... S.America all coming in after lunch today....on 10....On 15 meters right at sunset I worked  boston and then denver...large differences in distance between the stations worked in a short period of time...multiple hop propagation....

[k3msb]

We’ve had phenomenal 10M propagation into Southeast Asia and the Malaysia and surrounding regions since about last Wednesday.  Activity is/was mainly between 2300Z and 0100Z each evening.  I haven’t seen this type of propagation on 10M in a long, long time and I’m not complaining.

I kept switching my "fantastikplastik" rice rocket over to 29.0 but never heard anybody.  And to be honest I didn’t listen that long nor did I call; I was too busy having fun on CW.   

I hope your second graph is the one Steve!

[Pete, WA2CWA]

If you follow the prop maps in real time for 10 meters, or any band for that matter, you can tell pretty quickly who's working what and where.

http://www.dxmaps.com/spots/map.php?Lan=E&Frec=28&ML=M&Map=W2L&DXC=N&HF=S&GL=N