Something new (to me) caught my eye this morning and brought an exclamation to my lips: the three-day geomagnetic forecast for today shows Purple!! This indicates some serious geomagnetic activity! Red is not uncommon, but Purple really got my attention!
The disturbance is due to an active sunspot area 31 times the size of earth! There are 3-4 CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) headed our way, arriving in the next day or two, which will likely make SWLing a bit difficult, if not causing at least momentary blackouts in some places.
On the upside, for those amateur radio folks who like working Auroral Skip, conditions are likely to be quite interesting in the VHF and above ranges.
SolarHam.net and SpaceweatherLive.com are both excellent sites to study solar activity, so give them a visit! 73, Robert K4PKM
Robert Gulley, K4PKM (formerly AK3Q), is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. Robert also blogs at All Things Radio.
This is a yearly event called Dayton Hamvention. LOL
Ha ha!
This is fantastic because it should coincide with my POTA (Parks On The Air) activations this week! Oh wait…on second though… 🙂
What brilliant timing! Many thanks to our local star.
-Thomas
I concur Vince!
Dear Sun,
Thank you for your continuing service of reducing signal levels whenever I buy a new radio. This service has been extremely reliable in all the years, but think now it’s the first time an error happened: I ordered a mere AM/FM radio, which is not affected by geomagnetic storms at all. Also, I was checking out reception on my beach listening post and found the effect on the conditions pretty lukewarm. Despite SFI=74 and A=36 I could still hear WWV just fine on 15MHz and even had strong signals on 17m and activity on 15m. Have you been sniffing too many comets lately?
Cheers,
Ollie