Falling sunspots?

Sunspot number today has fallen to 50, the lowest for quite a while and 10m propagation is forecast to be “fair” again.

Yesterday, 10m did open for me to the USA and plenty of stateside stations copied my 500mW beacon in the end after a late start. I suspect today it may be harder going as we seem, on average, to now be on the downward slope towards the next minimum, although this is years away. If predictions of the next maximum are to be believed, a SN of 50 would be considered a decent figure for the next sunspot peak! Of course, the predictions could be wrong, although the predictions have improved a lot and most got cycle 24 pretty accurately.

I have not yet turned on the 10m beacon this morning as we have visitors. It will probably be turned on just before lunch. I am still on MF but there are few active stations in range.

See http://www.solen.info/solar/ .

Roger Lapthorn, G3XBM, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cambridge, England.

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