solarcycle24.com, from Kevin VE3EN

solarcycle24 is a pretty cool site! I found out about it after I worked Kevin, VE3EN, on 6 meters the other night. I told him I was up in Ontario a couple weeks ago operating from EN39. He checked his log and we worked on June 23. That was pretty cool!

Anyway, I looked him up on QRZ and found the link to his site. It is mostly about space weather and the status of the sun. The site is a bit busy, I will admit, but it is a very informative site. Check the pull-down site content menus for easy navigation.

For those that are unfamiliar, the sun goes in, typically, 11 year cycles of high activity. The energy from the sun is what ionizes our atmosphere. This is how shortwave radio signals travel so far - the signals bounce off the ionization in the upper levels (F region) of the atmosphere (also lower level, E layer, affects higher frequencies like 6m).

We have been in a "solar minimum" for the past few years, so radio propagation hasn't been great. It will be interesting to keep a watch on conditions as time progresses. We are surely going to climb back out of the rut! Keep up with the latest with Kevin, VE3EN.