{"id":135030,"date":"2022-02-01T04:25:48","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T12:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/radio-amateurs-skywatchers-rejoice-sat-operators-worry-solar-storm-incoming"},"modified":"2022-02-01T04:25:48","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T12:25:48","slug":"radio-amateurs-skywatchers-rejoice-sat-operators-worry-solar-storm-incoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/radio-amateurs-skywatchers-rejoice-sat-operators-worry-solar-storm-incoming","title":{"rendered":"Radio Amateurs & Skywatchers Rejoice, Sat Operators Worry: Solar Storm Incoming"},"content":{"rendered":"

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How do you look back over your life and divide it up? Maybe by decades, cultural moments, or geopolitical events. For radio amateurs with older callsigns there\u2019s a temptation to do so by solar cycles, as the roughly 11-year period of the Sun\u2019s activity had a huge effect on radio propagation through the charge it creates in the upper atmosphere. We\u2019re now in solar cycle 25, numbered since the 18th century when the science of solar observation began, and as never before we\u2019re surrounded by information from experts such as [Dr. Tamitha Skov], the so-called [Space Weather Woman]. When she says something is on the way we listen, so a recent Tweet predicting a direct hit from a solar storm with a good probability of auroras in lower latitudes<\/a> is very much worth sharing.<\/p>\n

We must extend our commiserations to readers in equatorial climes and ever through the lower half of the USA, southern Europe, the Middle East, India, Japan, and China. You won\u2019t see the aurora we\u2019ll catch in Europe along with our friends in New Zealand, Canada, Russia, and northern USA. But even then to those of us at moderate latitudes an aurora is a pretty rare event, so we\u2019re hoping for clear skies on the 2nd of February and would advise you to look out too if you\u2019re in the likely zone even if they won\u2019t be quite as impressive as those in our header picture. Meanwhile radio amateurs everywhere don\u2019t have to see pretty lights in the sky to reap the benefits in terms of propagation, so happy DX hunting! The Tweet is embedded below the break, so you can play the timeline for yourselves.<\/p>\n

Direct Hit! NASA, NOAA & MetOffice predictions agree the #solarstorm launched Jan 29 will hit Earth by early Feb 2! This one is slow so expect #aurora only as far south as Netherlands, north USA, & up to north New Zealand & Tasmania. #GPS & HF #radio issues on Earth\u2019s nightside! pic.twitter.com\/Uua1LGMgJR<\/a><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you look back over your life and divide it up? Maybe by decades, cultural moments, or geopolitical events. For radio amateurs with older callsigns there\u2019s a temptation to do so by solar cycles, as the roughly 11-year period of the Sun\u2019s activity had a huge effect on radio propagation through the charge it [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}