6 Metre Band

Steve White G3ZVW

6m activity from G3ZVW in November 2003

20th November

Once again the highlight of the month was an extremely intense aurora. It was caused when sunspot group 484 hurled a huge cloud of ionised gas (i.e. a solar flare) earthward.

Because of recent solar activity I have adopted the habit of frequently checking www.spaceweather.com to see if interesting conditions are forecast or in progress, and when I checked at about 3:15pm on the 20th the site told me that a truly monumental aurora was in progress. This is rather early in the day for an aurora (indicating the magnitude of it), as they don't usually get going until after dark. I immediately switched on the gear to find that 6m was wide open.

Over the next few hours I had 95 QSOs, appoximately half on SSB and half on CW. I worked 16 countries - G, ES, PA, OZ, GM, EI, GW, ON, DL, GI, F, SM, OK, UT, SP and 9A (9A is almost unheard of on aurora, because it is quite far south-east).

57 squares were worked (most interesting/distant in bold):

IN94 (SW France), IN96, IN97, IN98

IO63, IO64, IO65, IO72, IO75, IO80, IO82, IO83, IO84, IO85, IO86, IO87, IO92

JN06, JN18, JN26, JN38, JN39, JN46, JN47, JN48, JN49, JN68, JN78, JN79, JN86 (Croatia)

JO00, JO11, JO20, JO21, JO22, JO23, JO31, JO32, JO33, JO40, JO41, JO43, JO45,

JO50, JO51, JO54, JO55, JO60, JO65, JO67, JO70, JO72, JO80, JO81, JO93

KO21 (Ukraine), KO29 (Estonia)

The sunspot which caused the large aurora of 30 October passed in front of us again during the last week of November. This time, however, it didn't spark an aurora. With the normal solar roration of 27 days, it will be interesting to see if sunspot group 484 gives us a repeat performance on or around 17 December.

Steve, G3ZVW

Discover what effect an aurora has on CW and SSB signals, by hearing some of the QSOs that G3ZVW made on 20 November.

• CW QSO - Audio file 1
• CW QSO - Audio file 2
• SSB QSO - Audio file 1
• SSB QSO - Audio file 2

• Photographing Sunspot activity - Steve's guide to viewing and photographing sunspots safely.

• Why not use the Amateur Radio Forum board to arrange skeds - click here

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