Will it ever end? Yes in another year or so. As all radio enthusiasts know band conditions from LF, MF to HF have been fair at best and very poor at worst for many days, thanks to recurrent Coronal Hole #066. #066 has been a prolific pain in the ionosphere between 11/08/03 and 11/19/03, that's 12 miserable days of geomagnetic storming with a peak in the Kp of 6 and an Ap of 095. Actually this is the third pass around the Sun that this particular Coronal Hole has wreaked havoc. As #063 in October 2003 it produced a Kp of 6 and Ap of 106, as #059 in September 2003 it produced a Kp of 5 and Ap of 54. Now that #066 has lost it's grip on Earth's magnetic field all should be quiet, WRONG.
The monster record breaking sunspot group regions # 10484, 10486 and 10488 are back in view again, this time as #'s 10501, 10507 and 10508. As follows are their current location and magnetic complexity. 10501 2003.11.13 22 20 N03W05 0380 DKO beta-gamma-delta 10507 2003.11.18 11 22 N10E62 0890 EKI beta-gamma-delta 10508 2003.11.19 5 19 S17E75 0700 EKO beta-gamma Last month I said that I had a real bad feeling (unscientific) about #'s 10484, 10486 and 10488 before all heck broke loose. I don't think we will see identical solar space and geomagnetic weather as last time around it could still be very bad again. All three sunspot groups are capable of very large M class solar flares, with #'s 10507 and 10508 capable of huge X class flares and associated Coronal Mass Ejections, day side radio blackouts, severe geomagnetic storming, visible mid latitude Aurora and polar cap and mid latitude absorption due to elevated energetic protons storms >10 MeV (10+o). Oh yeah and if you have allot of fillings in your mouth they may heat up due to induced currents. Actually the sunspot groups are already wreaking havoc having produced seven very large M class solar flares in the past three days, one of which was just short of X class size at M9.6 beginning at 0747 UTC today. One associated Coronal Mass Ejection has already begun impacting Earth's magnetic field this morning with a Kp-6-7 (strong to major geomagnetic storming) and an elevated energetic proton event. Also there are three or four more Coronal mass Ejections headed for Earth as I write. As the horizontal (Bz) part of our magnetic field is very negative at approximately -50, our current geomagnetic storm may peak at a Kp of 9 which is a G5 extreme level storm. For those disinterested in all the physics discussed above, in simple layman terms expect long periods of poor to very poor propagation conditions on high and mid latitude paths, on night time LF and MF bands and day and night time on the HF band. Even low latitude paths will be impacted in a negative manner at times. Due to the current geomagnetic storming I was not able to make scheduled BPSK31 contacts on 80 and 160 meters in the past 12 hours with large antennas and 100 watts. A sign of things to come. 73, Thomas F. Giella, KN4LF Plant City, FL, USA EL87WX Yaesu FT-840 & PSK31 Digital Mode E Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yaesu_ft840 160 Meter Amateur Radio Resources & More: http://www.kn4lf.com/kn4lf.htm Daily Solar Space Weather & Geomagnetic Data Archive: http://www.kn4lf.com/kn4lf5.htm HF/MF Radio Propagation Theory Notes: http://www.kn4lf.com/kn4lf8.htm Florida Space & Atmospheric Weather Institute: http://www.kn4lf.com/fsawi.htm Friend Website Design: http://www.kn4lf.com --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free Thanks To Grisoft AVG. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.542 / Virus Database: 336 - Release Date: 11/18/2003 ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- World Radio TV Handbook 2004 is coming out! Preorder yours now! Only $20.97 through us. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823059685/hardcoredxcom ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt