Solar Flare Alert Subscription; Waterfall of HF Black-Out

Yes, that’s the one I have.
Interesting to note that the alerts come through later than the SMS ones.

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Regards to all … interesting… :information_source: 73s

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@W4GO Dear Matt, you can see X flares developing in real-time and their effect, D-layer absorption, in my free SWX smartphone app.

As soon as Xflux increases from C9.9 to M1.0, you have a minor X flare. So, in a sense, you are even pre-warned. :wink:

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Waterfall capturing black-out on the 20 m band caused by this afternoon’s X1.1 flare:

Event notification time-line:

4:42 PM local = 20:42 UTC: fading of signals, increase in noise floor first apparent on waterfall.

4:49 PM = 20:49 UTC: received NOAA alert of X-ray flux >= M5 on phone (via email-to-SMS gateway).

4:51 PM = 20:51 UTC: received NOAA alert of same on PC (via IMAP email client).

5:20 PM = 21:20 UTC: received NOAA summary on PC via email.

The contents say the M5 threshold was reached at 20:41 UTC, maximum flux occurred at 20:56 UTC, and the event ended at 21:01 UTC. One can see signals generally starting to come back at about the latter time on the waterfall.

Interestingly, the SpaceWeatherLive app didn’t produce any alert until I opened the app itself with the intention of confirming alerts were enabled for X-ray events (they were). I have since changed the phone’s OS settings to exclude this app from power saving features. Other apps don’t seem to require this measure to alert properly, though. Next flare, I’ll post an update on whether this worked.

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Interesting. I know GOES satellites publish Xflux every minute. Currently, my app probes this data every 5 minutes, but I could easily change that to every minute. That would represent a download of 25.7 kB every minute; so about 1.5 MB an hour.

I never realised this data could be that time critical on a difficult mountain top. I will change my code accordingly and let you know when I did.

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@W4GO Never believe a programmer; multiply their time estimates by at least a factor 3! :wink: In the end, it took me 3 hours to test and debug, but 1 minute Xflux updates work now and I published the new app version.

However, you will need to reload the web page with CtrlShiftR or clear the browser cache on your smartphone to see the updated version of the app. Otherwise, it takes one week for your browser to realise there is an updated version. You will know you have the latest version when you read the line Updated every minute for Xflux; 5 & 30 minutes for other values.

Please, also note that there is a 3 minute lag between the GOES satellite observation and NOAA publishing the Xflux value in JSON format. To be quicker, one would need to decode the proprietary GOES feed. I am not going to do that, but Python code contributions are always welcome. Anyhow, I assume my app is still quicker than any SMS and e-mail alerts. (Please, test.)

Moreover, their are occasionally small gaps in the satellite observations when the Earth or Moon is obscuring the satellite’s view to the Sun. This tend to happen around noon and midnight and especially around the equinoxes.

Matt, let us know how this works for you.

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Thanks for the heads-up - I’ve installed that here too. Looks good!

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Thanks Matt. I really like the idea of knowing there is an X Flare before I deploy an antenna at the summit…without adding an extra step to setting up. I looked for aa email - SMS gateway on EE - (a UK carrier) and failed - there isn’t one provided . After a bit more faffing around found iOS has a VIP e-mail that allows an e-mail from a VIP ( Very Important Phenomenon?? ). to appear as a message on a locked phone. It works and will allow iOS users to get an alert that is obvious on a locked phone. Might be useful. 73. Paul

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I didn’t see that option on the NOAA site, just email. Is that something you are doing locally or is there a NOAA SMS option?

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Just email. I’m using my mobile provider’s free email-to-SMS service, per the OP. YMMV.

accomplished by subscribing with an email address comprised of my phone carrier’s email-to-text gateway (in my case as a T-Mobile subscriber: <ten_digit_mobile_number>@tmomail.net).

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Thanks, will take a look.

I never realised this data could be that time critical on a difficult mountain top. I will change my code accordingly and let you know when I did.

I wouldn’t say it’s critical, but potentially helpful in some situations. Experienced operators are used to dealing with degraded HF propagation without the benefit of mobile internet service, e.g., be prepared with multiple bands/modes on HF, handheld for VHF. As my waterfall captures show, the term “black-out” is something of an exaggeration for ordinary flares.

I think an app/page that one has to actively check would be of most use when one already has reason to suspect a propagation event might be occurring. Signals disappear while operating; is it my gear, X-ray event, geomag event, or something else? Check current space weather to find out.

On the other hand, a push alert is useful in situations that are not conducive to interacting with ones phone. For example, you’ve just reached the summit and are about to start setting up the HF station. You hear an alert on your phone indicating that an X-ray event is in progress, so you decide to do VHF first, have a snack, etc. to let the black-out run its course.

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I’m late posting an update, but this seems to have gotten the alerts working (and I haven’t noticed any effect on my phone’s power usage):

An M5.4 flare occurred on 11 April, reaching maximum flux at 17:06 UTC.

The SpaceWeatherLive app raised an alert for this event correctly – that is, without me needing to interact with my device to “wake up” the app – at 17:09 UTC.

The email and SMS-via-email-gateway alerts from NOAA for the same event were received at 17:11 UTC.

The NOAA alert text indicated the flux threshold was reached at 17:05 UTC.

My SDR’s slow waterfall capture of the event, below, shows visible signal fade-out beginning at about 17:04 UTC.

(I don’t have an explanation for the distinctive noise signature appearing on the waterfall at about the same time; it doesn’t look like the increase in noise floor that I would expect from a flare, but I haven’t been able to find a local source for it either.)

To recap a rambling thread:

The SpaceWeatherLive app for android appears to provide timely push alerts of solar flares and the consequential HF “black-out.” In order to get the alerts, you may need to delve into your phone’s settings to exclude the app from power-saving measures.

If you want alerts of solar flares by email, or by SMS provided you have access to an email-to-SMS gateway service, you can subscribe to the NOAA service linked up-thread.

Based on my observations so far, the latency between discernible HF fade-out and alert arrival appears to be about five minutes for the app and about six to seven minutes for the NOAA service. This is probably subject to network-related variability.

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I didn’t know NOAA offered this. Thanks for sharing!

For anyone using other carriers, the 2 major carriers in the USA can receive texts like mentioned in original post.

Just use the email address ##########@vtext.com if you have Verizon or ##########@txt.att.net if you have AT&T.

This site has a list of what email address to use if using many other carriers.

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Caught the big one. X8.8 flare today near local noon. Noise burst and dramatic black-out from 9.5 MHz to 14.5 MHz captured on the SDR:

It’s interesting to attempt to correlate observed onset with the GOES X-Ray flux plot from NOAA:

16:46 UTC: X-ray flux (GOES -16/18 long) crosses M-class threshold
16:47 UTC: black-out begins on waterfall (host time is set accurately via NTP)
16:48 UTC: flux crosses X-class threshold
16:51 UTC: flux reaches peak magnitude

Reliability of the alerts from NOAA and the SpaceWeatherLive app has been generally good over the last few weeks. Occasionally, alerts from one or the other service arrive late or not at all. Having both has been useful redundancy.

Today, I needed triple redundancy. Luckily I happened to glance at the waterfall about 10 minutes into the black-out. Otherwise I likely would have missed getting the screen grab.

SpaceWeatherLive only raised the alert for the flare when I woke my phone up – a recurrence of the earlier problem which excluding the app from power saving in the phone settings has mitigated, though not totally resolved.

Worse, the NOAA alert via email-to-SMS gateway arrived about two hours after the flare and the alert destined for my normal email came about four hours late. I wonder if the sheer volume of space weather events recently has exposed scaling deficiencies in NOAA’s alert service.

It’d be interesting to hear others observations on the reliability of the alerts from either service.

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I now use the noaa alert - but it does seem to arrive after rather than during the event - but as my phone goes ping and it stays o the screen I at leas notice it - even with summit brain. (Only used 2m on the last summit…)

Q). What are the thoughts on the progression of Cycle 25? I know that the last couple of weeks excitement has not yet fed into the data. I think it already looks bigger than Cycle 24 - will we go back to the late 50’s with a SSN of over 300 and how will all the space hardware cope?

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Sunspot group 3664 is back, and threw out an X 2.9 flare this morning around 0700z. The associated ionisation wiped out the 80 metre Net I usually participate in on Monday mornings. All across the band all I could hear was local QRM, and it seemed the Hack Green SDR was similarly affected.

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I was going to take the hound out early, get back and activateTinto as the WX forecast was for a dry day. Well the forecast changed to wet from 11.00 till 2.30 and then I got the flare email. :frowning:

There was some blue in the sky and it was warmer, about 18C after 14C yesterday. Dog walked and it’s pouring down now. And the sky is a bit broken again. I think I’ll get the Gin out and watch reruns of Roger Moore and lovely 1960s ladies (no Botox, no boob jobs, no tattoos) in The Saint now.

Ah, DXHeat churning away now… SpE must have just kicked in on 6m…

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Yes, but it’s all FT8. Ah well, I will keep monitoring…

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I think this is what triggered the flare alert:
image
But it seems to have settled down again - just a forwarning of what is to come!

73 Ed.

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I did something useful, I repaired a 26m length of FSJ4-50B that got damaged in the May 2m contest. Someone didn’t know “righty tighty, lefty loosty” and managed to sheer an Andrew F4PNF-C female N connector from the cable. Don’t know who or how. Anyway to refit the connector you need to use the disposable flare tool which I thought “maybe useful” but cannot find it now. So I had to fit a male instead which had all the parts in the bag. Annoying because they’re £35 a pop. But it’s fixed now. During which time it has rained and been sunny. Over and over :frowning:

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