We had a bit of everything last week including increased Kp indices, a high solar flux, an X-class solar flare and coronal mass ejections. The solar flux index hit a maximum of 220 on Thursday 4 December. This brought good HF conditions until Sunday 7 December. The index declined to 169 on Thursday 11 December, […]

The prediction made for last week was for the solar flux index to increase, possibly reaching 155 by 1 December and 175 by 6 December. In fact, it hit 196 on 1 December and 200 on 2 December. This was no doubt aided by three large sunspot groups in the Sun’s southern hemisphere. We also […]

Last week was a mixed bag in terms of solar activity. Yes, we had geomagnetic disturbances but they were never really that bad, with a maximum Kp index of 5, and that was for only one three-hour period. This was mainly due to two large coronal holes on the Sun, which saw the solar wind […]

After the solar mayhem we reported in last week’s GB2RS News, the Sun has been relatively quiet over the past week. The maximum Kp index we saw was 4, on Monday, 17 November, but otherwise it was often below 1 or 2. The result is that the ionosphere has been more stable and DX has […]