RSGB
RadCom Assistant Editor
April 2, 2026
Over the last week, we have had a fair sprinkling of sunspots, along with some enormous coronal holes, including one almost rectangular hole.
Coronal holes are lower-energy areas on the Sun with open magnetic field lines, allowing solar plasma to flow out.
Geomagnetic conditions have mainly been settled, with the Kp index hitting a maximum of 3.67 over the past five days.
We had a long M1.3 solar flare at 0415UTC on Saturday, 28 March, and an
X1.5 class solar flare on Monday, 30 March.
Active region 4405 erupted at 0318UTC and launched a halo coronal mass ejection, or CME, into space that hit the Earth on Wednesday, 1 April.
Meanwhile, the solar flux index has remained above 140 for a few days, which bodes well for HF propagation.
NOAA predicts that the solar flux index will start at 145 at the beginning of the coming week and fall to 112 by Saturday, 11 April.
Geomagnetic conditions are set to be unsettled from Thursday to Sunday,
9-12 April, with a potential Kp index of 5 or even 6.
If this comes to pass, expect lower maximum usable frequencies, or MUFs, and disrupted HF conditions, especially on polar paths.
HF DX to look out for this week includes:
VHF and up propagation news from G3YLA and G4BAO:
The equinoxes are a time of the year when the Atlantic jet stream typically blows across the UK as it migrates north from the Mediterranean in the winter to near Iceland in the summer.
The weather for the coming week is going to see a succession of lows driven by the Atlantic jet stream crossing the UK with bands of rain and scattered blustery showers.
These may represent chances of some rain scatter for those on the upper GHz bands but this pattern suggests limited tropo options.
The prospects for meteor scatter are no better since we remain some way short of the next major meteor shower in late April. In these situations, your best chances are from random meteors, which tend to peak in the early pre-dawn hours.
The equinox also gets credit as being a preferred time for auroras since there is a better coupling between the Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind.
It is too early in the year for much Sporadic-E activity, but keep a check on the Sporadic-E graphs on propquest.co.uk for signs of brief upticks. Incidentally, some maintenance work is currently under way on the website so apologies for any interruptions.
For EME operators, Moon declination is now negative, reaching its minimum on Wednesday, 8 April. At this point, the Moon is up for only six hours and gets to a mere nine degrees elevation in the UK.
The Moon is also furthest away, or at its apogee, on Tuesday, 7 April so path losses are at their highest. 144MHz sky noise starts low but quickly climbs to a high of more than 2,700 Kelvin on Wednesday, 8 April.
