Signs of 10m opening up again for Autumn

In September, 10m propagation from the UK generally favours
north-south paths.

Nice to see 10m starting to open up again this Autumn. With the solar flux index (SFI) at around 160, I was testing a new antenna yesterday and heard 3B9FR (Robert) on Rodriquez Island in the Indian Ocean.

I bagged him first call on CW and thought it might be an opportunity to see what else was on. Two minutes later I had the ARRL centenary station W1AW/5 in the log from Texas on 10m.

I also heard low-power 10m beacons from Florida, Alabama and New Hampshire. Luckily, I heard all this before the X class solar flare hit us at 17:45UTC. The associated coronal mass ejection (CME) will no doubt cause us problems in the next 24-48 hours.

It is a little early in the season for the Northern USA on 10 metres to be reliable (see my prediction charts), but it bodes well.

In view of the date today, it did remind me of that fateful �9/11� back in 2001. On that day the SFI was 250 and I was working in my shack in the UK listening to the KQ2H repeater in New York on 29.620MHz, I heard the whole scenario played out.

From the first conversations suggesting that a Cessna had crashed into the WTC, to the full horror some time later. Eventually all communications ceased � I only found out later than the repeater was actually on top of the WTC itself, which explains why it went off the air.

Nowadays KQ2H is still on 29.620MHz, but is located in the Catskill mountains of up state New York. When conditions are right it is very loud indeed and a great indicator of good 10m propagation into the USA. I expect we will be hearing more of KQ2H in the UK over the next month or so.

This is a good time to prepare for worldwide 10m openings in the coming months. Don't miss them!