X-class Solar Flare Today.

The 21cm solar flux is still above 200, even if it was reduced a bit.

Today, this afternoon around 16 UTC the sun shot another X-class flare with the magnitude X1.

It looks like some of the sunspot group from last month have survived the rotation, and are now rotating into the Earth faced side of the sun. Look for more solar activity, and possibly some geomagnetic activity.

Remember, with those powerful flares we can also expect some shorter or longer blackouts on the HF bands during daytime, and sometimes also strong radio bursts on the bands from 20-144MHz.

I recall such a solar noise storm from back in the late 1980s when I could monitor 2m, 6m and 2m simultaneously. Interesting that the peaks in the noise were not synchronized over all the bands. The noise bursts would peak, first on one band, then on another, then maybe on the third band, but thal was not guaranteed.

I should get some more (simple) monitor receivers up and running this solar cycle, possibly on a few more frequencies. It is quite possible to make some recording with a simple low powered computer. I would say that with some simple hardware even a Raspberry Pi Pico should be able to do that job. 

Yes, too many projects, so I must prioritize.

Return of the Sunspots.

The sun is rotating. 

The sunspots that disappeared from the visible side of the sun 2 weeks ago have returned in force.

An emerging sunspot group adds to the show.

3 weeks ago the solar flux was well above 200. When the big sunspot groups disappeared the flux went down to about 135, still well above the 100 mark. 10m has been excellent for several months now, and there have been some openings on 6m.

Today's solar flux is again above the 200 mark, as today's (Thursday) solar flux No. is 215, and it looks like this will continue for some days. Today (Thursday) has seen several M-class solar flares.

What does this mean for our propagation?

Most of the time pretty good HF propagation, especially on the high bands. At times of solar flares there can be some SIDs (Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance) with the lower bands in particular having fade-outs.

Higher and Higher. Solar Flux.

The solar flux rose again, this time to 228 SFI. This is almost as high as the highest SFI of the previous cycle. That happened on January 7th, 2014, and it reached 237 SFI.

It looks like the trend is still upwards for this cycle, so will we see a higher peak than in cycle 24?

I like to think so, but we shall see.

Solar Flux.

 The sun keeps on giving.

Today's SFI (21cm solar flux) is 212. I think this is the first time in this cycle the SFI has been above 200.

With a few more days of this high flux I would not be surprised to see 6m opening with F2 propagation.

Exciting times!

The Sun Is at it Again. X2 Flare.

 Some "new" (actually old, but recurring) sunspot groups just rotated into view of Earth.

3 days ago one of them fired a flare of magnitude X1, and minutes ago the sun fired again. This time X2 - well strictly speaking X1.98, but I made the rounding-up. This is bound to create a sudden Ionospheric Disturbance (short wave fade-out) on the day side of Earth, and it will likely las a little less than an hour.

Also the 21cm solar flux is at 184 today. If this continues for several days more I suspect that there is a good possibility of F2 openings on 6m. 

I will be aware and monitor the situation.