Now that we've gone through the December solstice and are approaching
the March equinox. I figure it's about time to update what's happening
with the 80 metre band noise trends. The solar flux remains quite low
and constant, essentially unchanged from a nominal value of 70 since
July 2019. Despite this, the band does open up quite well in the
evening and there's a lot of DX to be had on FT8.
Regarding
the 24 hour noise floor snapshots, I now have a set from October 2019
to March 2020 - roughly 6 months covering a period about 2 weeks after
the 2019 equinox to 3 weeks before the next equinox. I've combined the
charts into a mp4 movie with each month's record pausing for 10
seconds. If you have a decent mp4 media player (such as VLC) you can
pause in the transition regions to examine more closely how things
change from month to month.
Quite
frankly, I was encouraged to see the change in the diurnal noise floor
between October/19 and January/20, but things don't seem to be changing
as quickly as I thought between January and March. Maybe there's a lag
and an effect associated with the solar analemma that I haven't
considered yet. Anyway, here's the movie for your pleasure.
73,
Hugo,
VE3KTN.