It seems this is the season for storms and Cycle 24 delivered successive geomagnetic disturbances at the G1 level including S1 radiation through the weekend. The K- and A-indexes seriously spiked reaching as high as 30 plus and an average of 5 during the storm peak. The overall effect diminished my 30 degree path into Europe on 20 and 15m both Saturday and Sunday morning. The path was especially important because I was pumping about 100 watts into a five element tri-bander while searching and logging.
My 315 degree path into Asia took a pounding because of space weather on Saturday afternoon when Japan is several hours into daylight. I didn't log any JA-stations as the second wave of energized protons pummeled the ionosphere. The same held true for 20m later into the evening. However, around 0400 universal time coordinated, our 5 to 20 degree polar path into European Russia on Saturday evening, was stand out fun.
The low bands with seasonal noise disturbances suffered as well with an extra load of space storm noise. Our club antenna is a multi-band dipole effective enough although not enough to overcome morale challenging conditions. The fatiguing early morning hours filled my log with a few 6 point rate strings deep into Asia.
Perhaps, I misjudged high band conditions this morning, as my 120 degree 10m path into South America was virtually closed. I was not hearing beacon big guns as I spun the dial. Likewise, 20 and 15m seemed to collapse, as European signals were lite copy and I'd logged about all the big guns in the game when beaming at 75 degrees to the East Coast.
Overall, I made an executive decision early this morning, and hit the off switch about 0900 Pacific Standard Time after 24 hours of #hamr fun. I'll follow up with another post detailing my results in the chair using my Kenwood TS850S plugged into W6AB antenna systems at 100 watts.
Contest on!