Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Thanks for trying, Compton. I managed to work Steve VK7CW on Saturday, with the much better take-off from G/SP-004 Shining Tor. That was the only bit of DX I managed all morning.

73 MIke

Iā€™m hurt. I thought I was the best DX. :wink:

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Yes, Steve, VK7CW is rarely not in my log nowadays. Heā€™s as good as a beacon I reckon!!

I responded several times to your CQ calls on Saturday Mike. At least I know now you were hearing me because you replied, but your reply confused me: ā€œTom, youā€™re QRMing me mate, please QSYā€.

Thing is, we hadnā€™t yet had a contact, there were periods when no-one else was calling, and I never called if you asked for VK or DX, or if you asked for a partial (except when that partial was ā€œthe station with Echoā€, to which I did respond).

Pity, as Iā€™m chasing a bit harder now as I home in on the 10,000 points ā€œSuperslothā€. Still, youā€™ve given me plenty of Chaser points over the years, and plenty of SWL points since you stopped working me, so thanks for those.

Iā€™d prefer the Chaser points to the SWL points though, so Iā€™ll keep calling you when I hear you call ā€œCQ SOTAā€ in the hope you have a change of heart.

Just heard that the US RF conditions prediction service are saying that the SFI will drop below 70 in the next few days - in the same report, I heard that the lowest possible level it can go to is 66. So this will be the worst possible RF conditions, let hope it starts to improve soon.

Ed.

Hi Ed,

This is looking like the start of a zero visible sunspot period. It could last 5 years. I think the tunnel is a lot longer than we hoped for and the lights are off.

73
Ron
VK3AFW

I doubt very much that the sunspot count will suddenly drop to zero for 5 years. Yes they will reduce on average as we approach the expected minimum in 2019, but the sun wonā€™t remain spotless until 2021!

If you like staring at a lot of numbers, youā€™ll find on this site the daily number since the year 1818 and the monthly number since 1748ā€¦ Even in 2008, there were days with spots.

Sometimes, the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.:anguished:

Actually the sun isnā€™t completely spotless today, there is a very small spot, a ā€œporeā€, in a group of bright faculae near the limb, whether it will develop further remains to be seen. Meanwhile an active area out of sight beyond the limb expelled a major CME on Saturday and that should rotate into sight soon. The light at the end of the tunnel might be flickering but it hasnā€™t gone out!

Anyway, why worry? Some of us may be about to experience our first sunspot minimum since becoming hams, others have experienced it before - some of us several times! Life goes on, the LF bands come into their own, and here in G-land we can reasonably expect to hear VK and ZL at breakfast time on 80 metres! The opportunities are different at sunspot minimum, but they donā€™t vanish.

Brian

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I got my license during a minimum, good for sharpening your skills. I found it a bit boring when everything worked easily later on when things got good.
Compton

Yes there were days with tiny spots but there were a lot with none. Note that a purpose built telescope is used to find these tiny spots.

Remember also the sunspot number is 11 when there is one discernible spot and the published numbers use a 13 month running average, thereby making a published sunspot count of 2 look better than the actual 0 that it was.

As of 12 months ago the 0.6 scaling factor had been abandoned increasing the sunspot number by 40%.

Just a recap, the calculation of daily sunspot number is

R = Ns + 10*Ng. R is sunspot number, Ns is the number of observed spots, Ng is the number of groups of spots.

While there are going to be some little spots during the minima, over at least 3 of the 5 years I expect to see the running average down under 3. Mostly zero spots but not zero for the whole minima.

73
Ron

Yep the lights going out: Read onā€¦
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/the-sun-has-gone-blank-twice-this-month-this-is-what-it-means/news-story/d775ecf894ab68415ed0108ced31a4e2

The two photos of the sun are hardly a true comparison, are they? A bit of sensationalism going on there. I suppose Joe Public will be gullible enough to take it in.

I get annoyed at this sensationalism about equating the suggested ā€œMaunder Minimumā€ with the so-called ā€œLittle Ice Ageā€, it is sloppy research by the reporter!

Recent work has shown that the effect of a full on Maunder Minimum would be a drop in global temperature of 0.3C. For comparison, the increase in global temperature of the last hundred years, ascribed reliably to AGW, has now exceeded a full degree Celsius. The ā€œLittle Ice Ageā€ was not global, its effects seem to have been confined mainly to countries around the North Atlantic basin, and is at least partly ascribed to increased volcanic activity. Press reports like the one in the Telegraph seem to imply that we will be back to cold winters and Frost Fairs on the Thames. No, that wonā€™t happen, we can still get occasional exceptionally cold winters when the North Atlantic Oscillation is in the cold phase, but at the time of the Frost fairs the Thames was wider and much more slow-flowing and froze much more easily than it can today, and today the world is warmer.

Despite the confidence with which Prof. Zharkova described his work, it remains a hypothesis which the sun might - or might not - confirm in future sunspot cycles.

Brian

Well, they could be, if the photos actually showed the same thing at different times and were representative of conditions, etc etc. That said, a quick look at some recent sun images in various colours and flavours here: Solar images at SDAC suggests that theyā€™re actually comparing something like the He II image with an intensitygram, which seems a bit dishonest (though plain old incompetence is a more likely explanation).

Iā€™m warming to the idea and think it is pretty cool that global warming will take us into a mini ice age.
Compton
VK2HRX

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Hi Brian,

I agree. I get less upset over inaccurate reporting now that I understand that itā€™s not merely ignorance and incompetence but a desire to grab a sensational headline that will get readers attention and expose the reporterā€™s name. Fiction is more entertaining. Opinion pieces are the rule here. Facts are no more than seasoning on the dish to be scraped off and discarded if unpalatable or uninteresting. I read recently that the 0 degree meridian in Greenwich had been moved to Paris! The article was about the last leap second.

When I was a lad, newspapers had an essential hygiene function. Now sadly the ink tends to come off so I view them as pretty useless.

Re climate change the air in mainland Europe seems decidedly chilly following Brexit. A micro ice age?

All is not lost.

Sporadic E will continue to happen regardless of the sunspot numbers. Good for 6 m and 10 m and maybe lower for for the 700 to 3,000 km range.

73
Ron
VK3AFW

Hi Ron,
On the European propagation situation - weā€™re back to cloud / raindrop reflections mode H.I. :weary: Really strong storms here last night with thunder, lightning and hailstones.

On the BREXIT point - thatā€™s politics and not to be discussed here but Iā€™ll say that although I am still a british citizen, due to how long I have been away from the UK (in Australia and Europe) I wasnā€™t allowed to vote. I think I was lucky!

Ed.

I donā€™t know if you can grow runner beans in VK, but they need a reliable source of moisture at the roots. I dig a trench and fill it with balled up newspaper before covering it over with soil. Newspapers may no longer be cut up into squares and hung by one corner, but they can still be useful in the garden!

Yesterday late afternoon the UKSMG map was showing multihop six metre propagation across the Atlantic - I really must get my antenna array down and fix the six metre beam!

Brian

PS Iā€™ve just checked out the UKSMG map and it shows Es contacts between eastern Europe and Japan, today might be a good day to monitor six!