[UK-CONTEST] GB5CC

[Dave Sergeant]

On 9 Mar 2008 at 0:00, gm4fam at tiscali.co.uk wrote:

> What happened from 0600z on sunday? I reckon it was lack of activity
> rather than condx - the VK/ZL stations were very good sigs up till
> 0900z but it was all the usual suspects QRV and very few new calls.

>From http://www.hfradio.org/propagation.html:

"Comment from the SIDC (RWC Belgium): The geomagnetic field is 
currently unsettled to active due to the onset of a high speed solar 
wind stream that caused a minor geomagnetic storm mostly between 2:00 
and 4:00UT earlier today March 9. Now, the interplanetary magnetic 
field is loosing strength while the wind speed stabilizes near 550 
km/s. Therefore, we forecast unsettled to active geomagnetic 
conditions for the next 24 to 48h, with a brief minor storm still 
possible over the next few hours."

When I checked around 0630 at the DK0WCY magnetometer 
(http://www.dk0wcy.de/magneto/magnet.htm) I found the K index was 5 
from 0300-0600z. It dropped to 3 during the day but I see it has just 
shot up to 5 again.

Still not a sunspot in sight though!

I turned in at 2300 with great hopes of working some of the 80m stuff 
first thing. At 0500 I found Nigel VQ5XF rather auroral here in 
Bracknell, calling CQ with no takers and unfortunately not hearing my 
QRP. Not a single of the expected VE stations to be heard anywhere on 
the band.

Just a little fun chasing new band slots event here, only 20 QSOs. 
But pleased to hear 15m in reasonable shape, couldn't raise Brian 
9J2BO on 10m. Beru is great in that you don't have the Europeans to 
compete with, this year it was a problem of cracking the huge pile of 
G callers! Guess that has to be good, but it meant we QRPers had to 
take the back seat.

73 Dave G3YMC

http://www.davesergeant.com