I hope it made your day!!!
Printable View
Whatever was generating the 10/S9 noise on HF is now gone, and in its place signals have returned.
I wonder if something of a wideband, low level noise source just inside my skip zone was effectively propagating into the area. I also wonder if that noise source might have been solar in origin, and with enhanced ionospheric propagation that noise is now being reflected back into space. This would make sense, as the peak of the noise level occurred from roughly 11AM-3PM and the sun's position at that time coincides with the southern major lobe of two of my antennas.
I heard there were some geomagnetic storms of late, some supposed to be strong. I haven't turned the radio on in days because HF has sucked that bad here and a lot of that has to do with being vertical only right now. Your post makes me want to see if things have improved yet. Edit: A quick check showed 20m with an S5 background noise and 40m with an S7. Better, but signals were weak too.
There is the post over yonder in the news about the last solar storm which sort of explains it, at least to this dummy.
Sometimes this helps - http://www.spaceweather.com/
Just made an FT8 contact with ER100 in Moldovia.
Had to actually look at a map...
I need to get this set up on the station computer right next to me and interface said PC to the Paragon-II right next to it. We're playing on 30M mostly, right?
I just shopped on monday and tuesday...
Dxeng: shopped Monday mid-day (edt)... Shipped on Tuesday... Arrives here on weds.
Hro: shopped Monday mid-day... Shipped Monday after the close of business from their NH store. Arrives on weds.
Gigaparts: shopped this afternoon, shipped today by FedEx, scheduled to arrive a week from weds (!)