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.