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RSGB
GB2RS News Team | July 24, 2026
We said last week that there were no coronal holes to worry about. Yet two days later a massive crack appeared on the Sun, stretching over one million kilometres.
Luckily, this didn’t amount to much and it had little effect on HF propagation, but it does go to show that solar events can rapidly develop and that long-term forecasts can be tricky.
The solar flux index has increased over the past week, and was sitting at 150 as this report was being written. As we suggested earlier, geomagnetic conditions have been quiet with the Kp index generally below 3.5, which bodes well for HF.
Solar conditions have been good with only four M-class solar flares and no X-class events. Any coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, have been directed away from Earth.
We are still in the summer doldrums, so D-layer absorption remains high and maximum useable frequencies, or MUFs, are generally lower than in the autumn and winter. However, we have the IOTA contest this weekend, which is a great opportunity to work some far-flung DX. So why not dust off your radio and get on the air? With mainland Great Britain being an island, you might find you are in demand as EU-005!
Other DX to be worked this week includes RI0BW, the Arctic Legends IOTA DXpedition; 3B9HR from Rodrigues Island; PJ7/LA5IIA on St Maarten; TY5FR from Benin; E51CZZ and E51KEE on the Cook Islands; VU4R from the Andaman Islands; and VP5G operating from Turks and Caicos.
In the coming week, NOAA predicts that the solar flux index may fall back to 125 at first, and then down to around 108. Luckily, the Kp index is predicted to remain low, with a predicted Kp of 2, at least until the end of the month.
VHF and up:
There have been good examples of both tropo and Sporadic-E in the last week and there are reasons to continue with some optimism for the coming week.
This is still a good period for summer tropo. However, remember that hot days are the enemy of tropo over land, and it tends to be sea paths that survive throughout the day, whereas land stations have to make the best of nighttime operations.
That said, the main change in the weather pattern this coming week will be that the high pressure, which has been over the Atlantic just west of Britain, shifts into the continent and eventually out of reach by the end of next week.
So, the message is to get into the tropo while it’s here and use the latter part of the week for perhaps meteor scatter, with the Delta Aquarids peaking in the coming week. There is reserved optimism for this since it’s primarily a southern hemisphere event.
Rain scatter has been very hard to find recently but looks like making a comeback as the weather turns more unsettled with sequences of fronts crossing the country. Maybe only patchy weak fronts, but still worth considering.
The summer aurora prospects are staying on the marginal side, but watch out for Kp index values creeping above 5 before turning your beams north.
Sporadic-E, which is rolling along in main summer season fashion, has been very good lately and was producing a full set of bands, up to 2m, last Thursday 23 July.
As the weather turns a bit more unsettled, this could help with Sporadic-E. This could happen if the fronts move into the continent and weak jet streams, and possibly thundery cold fronts, create turbulence at the right sort of range over Europe. This will probably favour paths to Scandinavia and to the Balkans.
For EME operators, Moon declination reaches minimum today, 26 July, so Moon window lengths and peak Moon elevation are at their lowest value.
With apogee yesterday, 25 July, path losses will decrease as the week progresses. 144MHz sky noise is high to start the week, peaking at over
2800 Kelvin today, 26 July, before slowly decreasing in the coming week.
https://rsgb.org/main/blog/news/gb2rs/propagation-news/2026/07/24/propagation-news-26-july-2026/
Mike erry, UK/BDXC
