By Courtesy of the Propagation team
G3YLA JIM
G0KYA STEVE
G4BAO JOHN
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Jim Bacon G3YLA
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and Nick Henwood
RSGB President.
Propogation News
6th March 2026
HF
3
What a difference a week makes! In our last report we mentioned that there were zero sunspots and a solar flux index of 130. This week has seen a turnaround with five active sunspot regions and an SFI of 144.
HF propagation has been reasonable with openings up to 10 metres to various parts of the world. We have only seen M-class solar flares, although there have been around 40 of them in the past five days.
We had a brief excursion in the Kp index when it went to five during one three-hour period, late on March 3rd. But it soon recovered and has been at two or lower for the past two days at the time of writing.
A small Earth-facing coronal hole is expected to be the source of a solar wind stream coming past Earth beginning March 6th. According to NOAA/SWPC, Active (Kp=4) to minor (G1) geomagnetic storming (Kp=5) will be possible beginning Friday and into the weekend.
We have now seen the start of the 3Y0K Bouvet Island DXpedition, which is due to run until about March 17th. It has already been worked from the UK on bands from 40-12m. Bouvet is virtually due south from the UK and the higher bands should be open from around 0700hrs to around 1900hrs UTC. 30m and 40m should open from around 2000hrs to about 0400hrs UTC. So there are plenty of opportunities to work them.
Next week, the Space Weather Prediction Centre in the US forecasts that the SFI may be around 156 this weekend, but will then decline to be in the 120s or even 110s later in the week.
We may have slightly unsettled geomagnetic conditions around March 10th, 12th, and again on March 14th-15th, with an estimated Kp index of four.
In all, not bad HF conditions, but keep an eye on solarham.com for daily updates.
VHF and up
The recent change of weather type to introduce high pressure onto the scene has provided some welcomed enhanced Tropo conditions in the last week.
In fact, this weekend the March 144/432MHz Championship should still be able to benefit, except perhaps for the northwestern fringe of the UK where the next Atlantic fronts will be making an intervention. It does look a little more problematic for the UKAC for 70cm on Tuesday and 6m on Thursday as the low-pressure pattern returns and offers a chance of rain scatter for the microwave bands.
The meteor scatter prospects are still driven by random activity, so as usual a preference for the early hours of the morning are called for on this mode.
It has been mentioned before that the Spring and Autumn are periods when auroras are more likely. This is known as the Russell-McPherron effect when the Earth’s magnetic field is better coupled to the solar wind, so keep monitoring the Kp index for signs of it going above Kp=5 and then check the bands for fluttery signals, even on the LF bands CW can be used as an early ‘heads up’ for potential activity on the VHF bands.
Lastly, thoughts about Sporadic-E should be kept in check for a while yet since we are still very far away from the usual start of the season.
For EME, Moon declination is negative and falling to a minimum next Thursday meaning shortening Moon windows and lower peak elevation until then. Path losses are falling until apogee on Tuesday the 10th. 144 MHz Sky noise is moderate, rising to a high of more than 3,000 Kelvin on Thursday and falling back by next weekend.
G3YLA JIM
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G0KYA STEVE
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