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RSGB
RadCom Assistant Editor | November 7, 2025
Last week was a mixed bag in terms of HF propagation. Earlier in the week, the 10m band was working very well, with Australia romping into the UK by mid-morning. But later in the week, everything had changed.
Solar activity was high with multiple X-class and strong M-class solar flares. At least three coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, were expected to graze or directly hit Earth, sparking strong geomagnetic storms on Thursday and Friday, 6 and 7 November.
The X-ray flare on Wednesday, 4 November was the first seen since June and came from active region 4274 – a large sunspot group which helped push the solar flux index to 147.
The Kp index climbed to 6.67 in the early hours of Thursday. Later that morning maximum useable frequencies, or MUFs, were badly affected, with a maximum of 18MHz over a 3,000km path as a strong G3 geomagnetic storm was in progress. So, it looks like good DX on the higher bands may be off the cards for a few days.
However, one interesting contact was noted on the CDXC Slack chat group when ZL7/LZIGCC was spotted on 14.005MHz using CW at 10.30am on Thursday.
Interestingly, the current solar activity is nearly all in the Sun’s northern hemisphere, so are we heading for a second peak in Cycle 25?
Next week NOAA predicts that the solar flux index may decline to be in the 130 to 145 range. Geomagnetic conditions are predicted to remain unstable until around Wednesday, 12 November.
With active region 4274 rotating to be more Earth-facing we may expect more solar activity, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, before things quieten down.
VHF and up propagation news from G3YLA and G4BAO:
We are becoming well acquainted with mild, unsettled weather and as a result there were plenty of rain scatter options on the GHz bands in the last week. These are likely to continue through the coming week.
Tropo is not completely out of the frame in the extreme south and east, albeit fleetingly, but for most of the UK it is unlikely to be a strong feature.
As in recent weeks, there are a few auroral alerts coming through but so far nothing too dramatic showing up on the VHF bands. Meteor scatter looks more interesting as we move into mid-November. The Leonids, one of the more important meteor showers in the calendar, peaks just after next weekend on Monday, 17 and Tuesday, 18 November, so we should expect to see some increasing activity as we progress through the coming week.
The UK Activity Contest events feature 432MHz on Tuesday, 11 November when the eastern side of the UK may have one of the fleeting moments of tropo to the east and south. Later in the week, on Thursday, it’s the turn of 50MHz.
Conditions look weaker for tropo for the 50MHz UK Activity Contest, but still favour the extreme east of England, if there is any left by then. It is possible that meteor scatter or even aurora might come to the rescue for this one.
For EME operators, the Moon’s declination is at its highest this weekend, ending today, 9 November, so Moon window lengths and peak elevation are also at their greatest. Path losses are now increasing as we passed perigee on Wednesday, 5 November. 144MHz sky noise is low and at its lowest midweek.
(Mike Terry, UK?BDXC)
