Propagation News, Friday 23rd July 2021

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Published: 22 July 2021

Last Updated: 22 July 2021

HF News

Sunspot numbers were down at the start of the week, but increased dramatically as the week went on.

By Thursday the solar flux index was up to 94 with a sunspot number of 86. There were six active regions visible on the Sun. Although many of these sunspots were quite small and not very complex, they all contributed to the higher solar flux, which is now nudging 100.

The region that was active on its last rotation (2835), and was responsible for multiple coronal mass ejections, appears to have quietened. Nevertheless, the Sun may well be more active next week as some of the regions have produced low-level C-class flare activity over the past few days.

NOAA reports that solar cycle sunspot progression over the past several months has actually been ahead of the cycle 25 forecast. This may bode well for the future.

HF propagation remains dominated by Sporadic E with daily openings on the upper bands. F2-layer propagation is at seasonal levels, with openings up to 14 and sometimes 18MHz being recorded. We are not seeing much in the way of 21MHz F-layer propagation, but that will kick in as we head into Autumn.

Thirty metres, or 10MHz, remains a band to check overnight with MUFs over a 3,000km path typically exceeding 10MHz.

Due to all this activity, NOAA has not unsurprisingly upped its forecast for the coming week. It now has the solar flux index at 85 next week, rising to 90. The geomagnetic prediction is for a maximum Kp index of two, possibly due to a lack of coronal holes.

However, it is too early to say whether we may have any solar flares and CMEs from the new regions currently rotating into view.

VHF and up

After some very good days of Tropo recently, it seems that the picture will look very different in the coming week. The decline of the high pressure will be complete by this weekend and heralds a week of unsettled weather with showers or longer periods of rain. On the upside, this puts rain scatter back on the agenda for the microwave operators.

Sporadic-E is still a good contender for DX although heading into August usually thins out the activity. The meteor input to E layer ionisation should keep hopes alive of renewed openings. The jet stream placements are mainly favouring the path to the south into Iberia initially, before moving east later to open up other more eastern parts of Europe.

Around we go again into another lunar cycle with negative, but increasing declination, this week. This of course means that we’ll see the Moon for longer as each day progresses. Declination goes positive on Thursday, but losses will rise daily after last Wednesday’s perigee.

Random or sporadic meteor rates are approaching their annual maximum around now, and the Southern delta Aquarids meteor shower is under way. This has a broad ZHR peak of 25 running from July 26th through to July 31st. Note that in Europe, the shower radiant is only above the horizon during the night and early morning.

There are some other minor showers peaking next week, so we should see excellent meteor scatter conditions.

Who works from a shack like this...

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Published: 08 July 2021

Last Updated: 20 July 2021

Every week we show you the shack of a NARC member and ask you to guess whose shack it is.

Have a close look at the photo below  - do you know who this weeks shack belongs to? They used to be a member of NARC a few years ago but you often hear them on morning 145.450MHz nets after, or maybe during, their Full English!

If you think you know whose shack it is (or just have a guess!) please email David & Tammy with your guess to  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  by 3pm on Wednesday and be sure to watch NARC Live on Wednesday evenings at 7.30pm to find out who's it is!

FINAL CALL FINAL CALL FINAL CALL FINAL CALL FINAL CALL FINAL CALL

After a different shack on every show since March 2020 we ave now run out but will keep showing them until you send no more, so if you would like us to feature your shack on this fun quiz please send it to us NOW as we will be changing to a different competition once we have used the last shacks....

We really are on LAST shack now unless there is anyones shack we have not featured before. If you have already had your main shack featured but want to send us a funny, old or alternative shack please do so and we will feature in a special 'Shack Wrap' at the end of the series!  

NARC Live show highlights and other club news and events...

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Published: 09 July 2021

Last Updated: 20 July 2021

73 88

David G7URP & Tammy M0TC 

Barford Radio Event - Thank you

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Published: 05 July 2021

Last Updated: 09 July 2021

Thank you to all those who attended our Barford Radio Event on Sunday!

I must admit that the planning and preparation was not without some new challenges, but I believe we ran the event as safely as it could have been and I want to thank all of the team of volunteers who helped deliver these plans on the day, including a special mention to a contingent from Kings Lynn Amateur Radio Club who offered to help us. Lovely to see clubs working together collaboratively and in fact as a result several of us from NARC have also offered to help KLARC at their rally on Sunday August 1st.

There are a collection of pictures already in the clubs gallery and if you took pictures at Barford and would like to share them, please email them to us or post them on our Facebook page www.facebook.com/norfolkamateurradioclub   Below is a wide angle I took of the event from the club gazebo... 

Lost Property: We only had one piece of lost property handed in which was a quite important part off a BT Home Hub 6 internet router, so if you bought one of these at Barford and you are missing something let me know what it is and I will send it to you.

Sincere thanks to everyone!

David G7URP

Are you planning a large event?

I have been asked by several people on how I went about planning this Barford radio event to make sure it would be Covid safe and legal, so I am happy to share my advice for anyone organising on running an event but anxious on the rules and regulations in a covid world;  Contact both the Council and HSE for the area of the intended event in good time and ask them what you can and cannot safely do. I was pleased to receive good advice and support both from South Norfolk Council and one of their Environmental Health Officers who linked me to Event Management Plan and Covid Risk assessment templates, as well as free to print signage etc. It was much more detailed than normal but completing a comprehensive EMP helped in producing full risk assessments. Of course regulations and advice changes too, so keep an eye particularly on the relevant sections of gov.uk as there is plenty of information there, however advice and rules can change so keep a note of links to the main pages you use to make it easy to check them.

Future talks at NARC...

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Published: 09 July 2021

Last Updated: 09 July 2021

If you are reading this you are probably of our NARC Live! viewers too and we hope that this streamed programme has helped keep you informed and entertained.

But we have a bit of a problem coming up and hope you may be able to help so please read on...

The weekly programme has meant that we have had to organise a formal talk or subject for every single week of the year, whereas when the club met normally pre-covid we would only have a talk once or twice a month with social informals and things like table top sales etc in intervening. Whilst this has hopefully been enjoyable, the problem is that having weekly talks or activities for the NARC Live programme, which is jointly shared between our programme secretary Roger G3LDI and myself, has been burning through so many of our contacts and ideas at roughly three times the normal rate and, frankly, Roger and I are beginning to run dry for new speakers and talks coming up.

So we need your help in finding new talks, speakers and subjects for them as we do not want to have to start repeating things or stop doing them altogether because of lack of speakers. Of course at some point the club will start meeting again at the school when things are settled, but we will still need talks and subjects for then, so if you possibly can please dig deep and think about any talks you have seen online and link them to us, or maybe even consider giving a talk or demonstration of something yourself. Maybe something on a a different mode we have not seen, like SSTV for example...

We hope to hear from you 

Thanks

David G7URP

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

NARC CW RufzXP Challenge league table - 17th June 2021

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Published: 17 June 2021

Last Updated: 17 June 2021

Thanks to Jim G3YLA for sending us this: a few small gains to the rankings in the latest edition of the RufzXP table this week, but Phil G4LPP still looks unassailable at the top of table.