The recent pattern of low pressure close to the southwest of the British Isles has staked its claim on another week with us and that means further spells of rain, especially in the south and west.

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It also will maintain the cold southeasterly over the northeastern half of the UK, but any high pressure stays well to the north and east of us, so Tropo will probably be hard to find.

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Rain scatter on the other hand may be more productive, especially for the south and west. Although some periods of rain, sleet or snow are possible in the northeast, where there may also be some snow static on the antennas from time to time.

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Meteor scatter again has to rely upon random meteors for the next few weeks and, as most of you who follow these bulletins will remember, are at a peak in the early pre-dawn hours.

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There has been a steady stream of auroral alerts recently, mostly minor events, but it reinforces the notion that it is worth monitoring the Kp index which gives a sense of the Earth’s geomagnetic activity and as a result high values of Kp are a useful indicator of a potential auroral event.

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Sporadic-E usually takes a break at this time of the year, but if you make a point of checking the foEs trace on the www.propquest.co.uk you may see that there are the occasional spikes in the graph of the foEs data from Dourbes in Belgium. This suggests that although rare, out-of-season Es occur, especially on the lower bands like 10m and 6m

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This week, Moon declination is positive and falling, going negative again on Thursday. Moon window length and peak elevation are falling. Path losses are rising again as we passed perigee on the 29th. 144 MHz sky noise will be low all week.

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