Propagation

To all,

The weekly Prop Reports published at the ARRL website can be quite out of
date!

There are daily reports issued by the IPS in Sydney, which provide a much
more realistic indication of current solar activity and forecasts up to
three days ahead.

The latest report, of November 1 advises that solar activity is "low", with
the 10.7 cm Solar Flux at 139. and the daily Smoothed Sunspot Number at 93.

Forecasts for Nov 2-4 are:

Flux 145-150
SSN 99-105

Go to http://www.ips.gov.au/Solar/1/5

The ARRL info is mainly an historical summary, with details about short-term
peaks of Flux and SSN, which can fluctuate widely from day to day.

Here in Melbourne, multi-hop long-distance HF propagation on frequencies
above about 13 MHz on transmission paths following darkness or semi-darkness
paths continues to be extremely unreliable.

As a matter of interest, the 21 MHz band is very lively here in Melbourne,
for transmission paths following daylight routes such as on Nov 2 2011
(applicable mainly to transmissions originating in Asia and the Middle East)

21510 IRAN VOIRI Swahili 0820
21540 MARIANAS IBB Tinian Chinese 0500-0530
21570 PHILIPPINES IBB Tinang Chinese 0500-0530
21580 FRANCE RFI-Issoudin French 0940
21600 IRAN VOIRI, HUGE SIGNAL Russian 0500-0530
21715 THAILAND IBB-Udorn 0800-0830
21725 AUSTRALIA RA-Shepparton groundwave into here 0200-0500
21805 RUSSIA VOA-Novosibirsk English 0800-0830 MASSIVE SIGNAL

Transmission providers have taken a big punt on the use of this band for
shorter-haul daylight routes!

Regards from Melbourne!

Bob Padula