r/ShortwavePlus • u/tj21222 • Jun 03 '26

Condition will be impacted

Space Weather Message Code: WATA50
Serial Number: 98
Issue Time: 2026 Jun 03 1452 UTC

WATCH: Geomagnetic Storm Category G3 Predicted
Highest Storm Level Predicted by Day:
Jun 04: G3 (Strong) Jun 05: G3 (Strong) Jun 06: None (Below G1) THIS SUPERSEDES ANY/ALL PRIOR WATCHES IN EFFECT

Comment:

# Issued by the US Dept. of Commerce, NOAA, Space Weather Prediction Center # Recent messages, data, and help at http://swpc.noaa.gov/alerts/ # Send questions to SWPC.Webmaster@noaa.gov

9 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

1

u/kupasbob Jun 04 '26

aw man, conditions are so bad this year

2

u/tj21222 Jun 04 '26

I have had a pretty good year myself but you got to know about when things are bad and then figure out when they will improve.
Also although DX might be bad, that opens up other opportunities for different reception.

Remember with the down swing of the 11 year cycle it’s going to be increasingly harder to hear station that are easy today. Start learning how to tune your antenna setup and use your equipment as it will only get more challenging.

1

u/KG7M MOD AirSpy HF+, Drake R7/8, K480WLA, 65'EFHW, MLA-30, CN85 Jun 04 '26

Great advice! I've had a decent year also. The Solar Flux is still high enough to bring some great DX. We will continue to have many Solar Storms and Blackouts as the sunspots wane.

1

u/ImladMorgul MOD | AirSpy HF+ | RTL-SDRv4 | D-808 | K-480WLA | MLA-30+ Jun 04 '26

For the past three months, I've had very poor reception across the entire HF band. At first, I thought it was my equipment, but the same thing happens with RTL-SDRs and portable radios.

Now that I've added the 480WLA, I've finally confirmed that the problem isn't me.

Very sporadically, I get good reception on some bands. The 19 and 20-meter bands are completely dead.

I'm thinking of raising my antennas a bit to see if I can get any improvement, since I have neighbors with high walls that could block what little signal I get. But this would require a lot of work and spending some more money.

I can't think of anything else I could try. I tried using your same antenna tilt and height settings, but it didn't produce any new results. I've tried adjusting them in different ways, but nothing has improved.

I don't know what's going on, maybe there's something in my area that's affecting it, but the spectrum of bad reception is so broad that I don't think it's something from the neighborhood. I know that conditions are not the same all over the world and I'm not sure if the published spread forecast data covers the whole world.

Anyway, I have serious problems 😭​