Typical - first summit outing in about 4 years and we have this:
Still going out though - testing an antenna for CT3 trip
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Last night from home QTH in West Wales. Possibly more tonight? I know some from this group took some amazing photos last night but I’ll let them post in their reports.
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Tonight in Catalonia
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And it is bloody raining and thick clouds here in VK1 - just when we would supposedly been able to see an aurora with the naked eye. To make things worse, conditions on HF are horrible - some activity on 6m and up, but not long haul. Heard one auroral enhanced call (from roughly 190km) on 6m SSB with some seriously raspy audio which was interesting, but seriously, rain rain (and clouds) go away.
Matt
VK1MA
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Oops! I was going to take my KX2 and car-roof-mag-mounted Cha MPAS Lite vertical with me on my 3-day trip to Sussex next week but if this keeps up I won’t bother.
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Nah, do it because you’ll be able to work a few QSOs. Anyway there seem to be plenty of spots up. I feel most for Gavin GM0GAV who is activating GM/NS-154 which is significantly remote by UK standards, there is no road access out there. I hope he gets to activate each summit out there and hopefully qualify them.
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Seriously, the trouble-making sunspot (AR3664) is already a lot less geo-effective and will rotate out of sight on Monday and the storming will die away. Anyway, if things persist you will have auroral and auroral-E to play with and likely some Es too. Unless a new monster sunspot rotates into view the spots following AR3664 are just pussycats and normal service will be resumed for you!
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And I thought my summits in GM/NS last week were a bit remote !
I wish GM0GAV the best of luck out there.
Andy
MM7MOX
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I’ve just been in the garden and projected the sun’s image using a pair of 10x50 binoculars. Gorden Bennet that sunspot is H U G E!
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Good morning. No QSOs outside of SA heard today.
Very strange noise from the direction of Europe.
Let’s wait for improvement.
73
Carlos
PY2VM
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Current status (T Index) at 1400 UTC:
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Andy’s garden 
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The blackout, or whatever is the polite term for badly broken sky, took its toll today.
Only “workable” band was 40m, nothing heard at all then a very strong signal which faded to nothing before I could exchange; wash, repeat.
Took me nearly 2 hours to get 4 contacts and only one of those was in response to a CQ and/or self spot.
Off to open a bottle of something nourishing and drown my sorrows until the Sun behaves
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Must be the Eurovision Song Contest.
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George,
Many thanks for the explanations. We live in interesting times.
73!
Mike, WB2FUV
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The bands are so quiet that you can hear a mouse pee on a cotton ball from across the room. de W6LEN / Jess
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That was on 50.313 MHz yesterday evening. There was no ice cream van at the summit.
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I’ve just got back from a few days in Copenhagen - first time I’ve been - what a superb city!
Straight back to work today, playing for Tony Christie in Worcester. So that meant Walton Hill G/CE-002 en route. But would I collect the all-important Challenge multiplier in the current solar storm?
10m was silent - apart from 4 or 5 signals on FT8. I could decode them - but they weren’t responding to me - except a 2E0 in IO91 - but we didn’t complete.
So onto 2m FM with the handheld, and fortunately the second station worked was able and keen to QSY to 10m for a groundwave SSB contact. A few more were made on 2m to comfortably qualify.
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