SB PROP @ ARL $ARLP005   
   ARLP005 Propagation de K7RA   
      
   ZCZC AP05   
   QST de W1AW     
   Propagation Forecast Bulletin 5  ARLP005   
   From Tad Cook, K7RA   
   Seattle, WA  February 4, 2011   
   To all radio amateurs    
      
   SB PROP ARL ARLP005   
   ARLP005 Propagation de K7RA   
      
   The past week had one zero sunspot day, Thursday, January 27.   
   Activity came right back, but the average daily sunspot number for   
   the week fell over 12 points to 20.1, and average daily solar flux   
   declined 2.7 points to 80.8.  After the sunspot numbers of 21, 22   
   and 22 on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the sunspot number rose to   
   32 on Thursday, February 3.   
      
   Predicted solar flux values for the next week were below the average   
   for the previous seven days when reported on Thursday in the ARRL   
   Letter, but the forecast has improved since then.  Solar flux values   
   forecast by NOAA/USAF are 80 on February 4-8, 78 on February 9-10,   
   then 80, 80, 82, 81, 81, 82 and 88 on February 11-17.   
      
   Predicted A index on February 4-5 is 10 and 8, followed by 5 on   
   February 6-28.   
      
   Geophysical Institute Prague sees unsettled to active conditions for   
   today, February 4, unsettled February 5, quiet on February 6-8,   
   quiet to unsettled February 9, and unsettled conditions return on   
   February 10.   
      
   On Friday the STEREO craft are now very, very close to perfect   
   alignment for 100% coverage of the Sun.  I checked just now at 1430   
   UTC on February 4, and STEREO has achieved 99.899% coverage, the   
   missing sector now a tiny slit near the 180 degree meridian.  See it   
   at http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov.   
      
   By 2300 UTC on February 5 STEREO coverage should be 99.917%, and it   
   should reach 100% coverage shortly after 0926 UTC on Sunday,   
   February 6.  This is when the STEREO satellites begin their move   
   into the position where the gap closes on our Sun's far side, and   
   begins to open on the Earth side.  Images from the NASA Solar   
   Dynamics Observatory will begin to fill the new gap along the Sun's   
   zero degree meridian, the side facing us.  See the SDO page at   
   http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov for almost-live images.  They have a nice   
   gallery of recent images at   
   http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/main.php.   
      
   We have some new 3-month moving averages for sunspot numbers, and   
   this solar cycle appears stalled, although numbers are much higher   
   than a year ago, and are back up to the numbers seen on the downside   
   of cycle 23 during late 2005 and early 2006.   
      
   Our 3-month moving average takes the sum of all sunspot numbers for   
   three calendar months, divides the total by number of days, and   
   reports it as for the center month.  The next month's average drops   
   the oldest month and adds data from a new month.  So the latest   
   moving average is centered on December 2010, and takes the   
   arithmetic average of all the sunspot numbers over the 92 days from   
   November 1 through January 31. The total was 2,765 and the average   
   centered on December, 2010 was 30.1.   
      
   Here are the moving averages for the last four years, starting with   
   the numbers centered on January 2007. 2007 averages were 22.7, 18.5,   
   11.2, 12.2, 15.8, 18.7, 15.4, 10.2, 5.4, 3, 6.9, and 8.1.   
      
   For 2008 3-month moving averages were 8.5, 8.4, 8.4, 8.9, 5, 3.7, 2,   
   1.1, 2.5, 4.5, 4.4, and 3.6.   
      
   The 2009 averages were 2.2, 2, 1.5, 2, 4, 5.2, 4, 4, 4.6, 7.1, 10.2   
   and 15.   
      
   The 2010 averages were 22.4, 25.7, 22.3, 18.5, 16.4, 20.4, 23.2,   
   28.9, 33, 35.6, 31 and 30.1.   
      
   I believe it was 20 years ago this week, early February 1991, when I   
   took over writing this bulletin (without realizing it at first) from   
   Ed Tilton, W1HDQ who had written it for so many years that I've   
   found no one who recalls when it started.  I remember copying his   
   bulletin as a 13-14 year old on CW in 1966 from W1AW.   
      
   The propagation bulletin came out on Sunday, January 7 or February   
   3, saying that W1HDQ was ill, and there would be no propagation   
   bulletin from W1AW that week. Until then I had my 20 meter Yagi left   
   pointed toward 81 degrees (short path from me to W1AW) and my Drake   
   TR7 left on the 20-meter W1AW RTTY bulletin frequency.  I copied   
   ARRL bulletins unattended on FEC AMTOR (a serial mode with   
   redundancy and parity bits) and after cleaning them up, I would put   
   them out on the packet radio network via VHF. At that time the   
   coast-to-coast packet network was not well connected, and it would   
   often take several days for ARRL bulletins to reach the West Coast.   
   I had been doing the same thing with the VK2SG RTTY DX Bulletin.   
      
   Around the time Ed's illness was announced I noticed a dramatic rise   
   in solar indices.  The daily solar flux I copied from WWV on January   
   24-31, 1991 was 214, 267, 283, 303, 327, 353, 353 and 357.  Solar   
   cycle 22 was declining, and by the way, I cannot find any evidence   
   that there have been solar flux values anywhere near this high at   
   any time in the past 20 years. I thought it was a shame that the   
   ARRL wasn't reporting this in a bulletin, so I called ARRL   
   headquarters to see if the propagation bulletin would be returning   
   the following week.  The person I talked to said he didn't think so.   
   Then I called Ed Tilton at his home in Florida.   
      
   Ed's wife answered my call, and said he was too ill to speak with me   
   on the phone.  She asked why I was calling, and when I told her, she   
   said, "What are the numbers?"  When I told her the solar flux was   
   above 350 she quickly said, "Oh, he'll want to hear this!"  After a   
   long silence Ed's voice was on the line.  He was thrilled by the   
   news of the solar activity, but said he didn't know when he would be   
   able to write the next bulletin.   
      
   I called ARRL headquarters again, and told the person I had spoken   
   with that something HAD to be done, because this news was just too   
   big.  Maybe I could give him the information, and someone at   
   headquarters could write an interim propagation bulletin until Ed   
   recovered.  The person I spoke with said he had no idea who would do   
   this, so I volunteered that I was familiar with Ed's style because I   
   had been copying the bulletin and editing out errors for   
   redistribution via the packet network.   
      
   I was asked to write something up and email it in.  Yes, I had email   
   back in 1991, actually since the 1980s, due to the generosity of   
   WA6SWR, who gave me an email account and Usenet access so I could   
   read and post to rec.radio.amateur.misc.  It was a UNIX shell   
   account at a company he owned.  Remember, this was just a few weeks   
   before Tim Berners-Lee released the first web browser and HTML   
   editor, so there was no worldwide web.   
      
   They liked the first bulletin, and asked if I could write another   
   the following week.  I never intended to replace Ed or even thought   
   I was qualified, and unfortunately Ed never recovered enough to   
   write another bulletin, and passed away over six years later.  Soon   
   I changed the release to Friday instead of Sunday evening, so we   
   could report propagation news just before each weekend.   
      
   Hard to believe it has been 20 years, but one week rolls into the   
   next, and time flies.  I've learned a little about propagation since   
   then, mostly from a helpful pool of patient, generous and   
   knowledgeable readers.   
      
   David Moore, who is not a ham, sent a press release from the   
   National Science Foundation about a new large-scale space weather   
   model.  Read about it at http://snipurl.com/1yucl3 and see the   
   hi-res image at http://snipurl.com/1yuchz. Also see the web page for   
   the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling at   
   http://www.bu.edu/cism/.   
      
   Tamas Holman, HA5PT (see http://www.qrz.com/db/HA5PT for photos) in   
   Budapest sent in this interesting report:   
      
   "In the morning of January 30 I was chasing DX on 17m and heard   
   UT7UJ calling CQ. Though Ukraine is not DX from Budapest I still   
   needed Ukraine confirmation on 17m and VE7CC DX cluster reported he   
   is LoTW member so I called right away. Dim hardly copied my 100W and   
   after the fourth attempt he was still asking QRZs. Because his   
   signal came to me on multiple paths with echoes I routinely switched   
   my SteppIR antenna direction to LP and suddenly his weak signals   
   became strong and we both got into our logs with 599. After our QSO   
   I recorded his CQ changing my antenna direction in the middle, the   
   first half is LP and the second SP direction. Looking at the audio   
   signals even the delay between the two paths can easily be measured   
   and it shows that the 0.13 sec was just needed to cover the 39,000   
   km distance through long path. Though when I called Dim I did not   
   want to make a long DX contact it turned out that I reached my ODX   
   QSO in my life."   
      
   ODX means his best long distance QSO.   
      
   Jeff Hartley, N8II of Shepherdstown, West Virginia reported on   
   February 1, "Low band conditions were fairly good over the past few   
   days. I didn't take part in the CQWW 160 contest. The high bands   
   have really been poor with very marginal western EU only on Sunday   
   the January 30; January 29 was a bit better. Taking a look at the   
   ARRL predictions for January, they are overly optimistic on MUF. We   
   have had very few openings to the west coast on 10 meters, charts   
   show about 3-1/2 hours starting 1730Z. Even South America which   
   shows an even longer opening is not present most days on 10 meters.   
   I think we all had expected better openings on 15 and 10 meters by   
   now. We had some really nice 10 meter openings February 2010 and   
   October 2010, but December and January have been pretty poor."   
      
   If you would like to make a comment or have a tip for our readers,   
   email the author at, k7ra@arrl.net.   
      
   For more information concerning radio propagation, see the ARRL   
   Technical Information Service web page at   
   http://arrl.org/propagation-of-rf-signals. For an explanation of the   
   numbers used in this bulletin, see   
   http://arrl.org/the-sun-the-earth-the-ionosphere. An archive of past   
   propagation bulletins is at   
   http://arrl.org/w1aw-bulletins-archive-propagation.  Find more good   
   information and tutorials on propagation at   
   http://mysite.ncnetwork.net/k9la/index.html.   
      
   Monthly propagation charts between four USA regions and twelve   
   overseas locations are at http://arrl.org/propagation.   
      
   Instructions for starting or ending email distribution of ARRL   
   bulletins are at http://arrl.org/bulletins.   
      
   Sunspot numbers for January 27 through February 2 were 0, 27, 27,   
   22, 21, 22, and 22, with a mean of 20.1. 10.7 cm flux was 80.5,   
   80.6, 81.4, 82.6, 81.3, 79.9 and 79.2 with a mean of 80.8. Estimated   
   planetary A indices were 3, 4, 4, 1, 5, 8 and 5 with a mean of 4.3.   
   Estimated mid-latitude A indices were 2, 4, 3, 2, 4, 7 and 5 with a   
   mean of 3.9.   
   NNNN   
   /EX   
      
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