By Courtesy of the Propagation team
G3YLA JIM
G0KYA STEVE
G4BAO JOHN
Its all about the weather
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Jim Bacon G3YLA
NARC club member
and Nick Henwood
RSGB President.
Propogation News
6th February 2026
HF
3
It has been a good time for HF DX. Settled geomagnetic conditions and a fairly high solar flux index has meant the ionosphere has had time to shine.
With the Kp index not exceeding 4.33, and generally being in the ones and twos, coupled with an SFI in the 160s, this has meant that the upper HF bands have been humming.
This is despite an awful lot of relatively minor C- and M-class solar flares.
DX heard or worked this week includes stations in Vietnam, India, Australia and New Zealand on 10 metres, even with modestly-equipped stations.
DX being chased includes the KP5/NP3VI Desecheo Island DXpedition near Puerto Rico. This has been difficult, often because they are running low power on their remotely-controlled rigs. But UK stations have got through on all bands from 40m to 10m. Due to deteriorating sea conditions they have delayed equipment recovery until March 3rd, so you still have time to work them.
The next big DXpedition to look forward to is 3Y0K Bouvet Island. Due to technical problems with their ship, the operation has now been delayed to start around February 26th. With the path to Bouvet being almost due south from the UK, propagation predictions suggest that the path should be open from around 0730hrs UTC until 1830hrs UTC, up to 10 metres, with 21MHz being open from around 0800hrs to 1000hrs UTC and again from 1600hrs UTC to 1800UTC.
Outside of these times, look for a path on 20 metres, or even 30/40 metres, in the evening and night.
FT8 will be the most favourable mode, but CW and SSB are possible, but remember they will be using split frequency operation.
Next week, NOAA predicts that the SFI will increase to be in the range 160-180. Geomagnetic conditions may start the week settled, with a predicted Kp of two, but we may expect more unsettled conditions as the week progresses with a predicted Kp of four from the 16th to the 21st.
So get your HF Dxing in early next week!
VHF and up
The weather is often described as blocked when we see long lasting high pressure, which hangs around for weeks at a time and of course is a gift for Tropo on VHF. However, right next door to a blocked high you will probably find a low-pressure region, which is also blocked for the same reason.
Currently we are in the middle of a prolonged period of blocked low pressure, hence the rain and absence of Tropo. The position of the low varies a bit, of course, so sometimes it is milder southerly winds with rain and at other times colder northerlies with snow.
We have the full variety in the coming week or so and that means no Tropo for VHF operators, but plenty of rain scatter for the GHz folk.
The meteor scatter position hasn’t changed since last week’s news, so we are once again confined to random activity and, for this, early morning hours are usually best. Aurora alerts continue to trickle through and as we approach the spring equinox the chances of auroras improve, but a little way to go yet.
Lastly, thoughts of Sporadic-E remain dormant since we are some way sort of the typical early season openings of late April and May, but as usual consider checking the propquest.co.uk graphs occasionally, which have shown minor peaks of the foEs, or critical frequency Es layer, in the early evening on some days.
The Moon reached perigee (closest to Earth) on February 10. The Moon is moving toward apogee on February 22, meaning path loss will gradually increase throughout the week as the Moon’s distance grows. Cosmic background noise is relatively low during this period, which helps maintain a better Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR).
G3YLA JIM
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G0KYA STEVE
Communications and PR for hi-tech and aerospace companies
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