Space Weather

An M2.7 flare peaked at 09h19 UT from almost Earth-facing region AR4246. A minor R1 radio blackout affected eastern and southern Africa.

An M1.9 flare also erupted from AR4246 at 05h27 UT 13 Oct.

Increasing solar activity has increased noise on the HF bands. Conditions on HF are mostly "fair" at this time.

#spaceweather
#amateurradio
#radiopropagation
#g7izu

Radio Propagation

Quite good VHF tropospheric propagation tonight is sending me the Swiss 2m beacon HB9HB in JN37 on 144.448 MHz. Distance 912km bearing 108°. Received using Airspy HF+ with a Youloop.

#radiopropagation
#amateurradio
#hb9hb
#g7izu

Radio Propagation

FT8 is propagating well on 2m tropo from Poland into my Youloop and Airspy HF+. Distance 1,423km. Also decoding Denmark, Germany France and northern Spain.

This aligns well with the tropospheric radio forecast by F5LEN.

https://tropo.f5len.org/forecasts-for-europe/

#radiopropagation
#amateurradio
#g7izu

Radio Propagation

WSPR and FT8 are incredible modes for plotting radio propagation.

Today I'm receiving 10mW WSPR beacon transmissions on 14 MHz from amateur balloon SP6MPL in mid-Atlantic and at 13,680m altitude. My receiver is an Airspy HF+ Discovery with the basic Youloop antenna at 2m above ground.

Also on the map is Polish station SQ3XZ on 21 MHz running only 1mW! Offscreen, I'm also receiving VK3QN near Melbourne running 5W. WSPR is a low-power data mode which takes 2 minutes to send a message, usually consisting of just a callsign, locator and power level information.

I'm currently decoding all WSPR and FT8 bands using two instances of WSJT-X v3, using the HF+ for WSPR and a Yaesu FT857D for FT8, feeding data to https://wspr.aprsinfo.com/ for WSPR and https://shorturl.at/ENYjH (PSK Reporter) for FT8. All HF bands are scanned several times per hour.

For offline mapping I'm using Hamclock and Grid Tracker.

#radiopropagation
#amateurradio
#g7izu
#wspr
#ft8