Is this the end of Summer, and Summer Es?

I tend to see the harvesting of the wheat field beside GM4FVM as bringing the end of Summer Es season.

That used to happen regularly early in September. However, last year it was a month early, and this year it happened on 18 August.

So I guess this is a silly romantic idea I have, as surely the 2024 Summer season can hardly end on 18 August?

Well the schools around here have gone back from their Summer Holidays - they reckon Summer 2024 is over.

In many ways I hope the 2024 Summer Es season does end now, because hopefully Autumn will be better.

The difference between 50MHz Es this year and the same time last year is pretty stark.

50MHz contacts at GM4FVM from 19 July to 18 August in 2023 and the same period in 2024

Only around 10% on the 2024 contacts were multiple hop DX ones (that equals two contacts) compared with 32% last year (36 contacts).

Things on 70MHz were similar. On 144MHz Es openings are unusual this far north so this is harder to judge on that band. There was one big single hop opening between those dates in 2024 on 2m, on 6 August, and just one small one in the same period 2023. If I could see any pattern in the 2m openings I would be very happy because they are rare as rare things.

What can explain the significant difference this year? Well it could just be down to the random nature of Es. You cannot count on Es at any time of year, and maybe this is just natural variation. 

On the other hand I have spoken to several people who are certain it is due to the sunspot cycle peak. I do not recall this happening at the last sunspot cycle peak but then everything was much less organised on 6m then. The season was much shorter and ended about now in the year in those days, but surely that was due to lack of activity. After all it did not resolve immediately outside the peak sunspot period. Anyway, this was discussed here and after reviewing the data I cannot say that anything remarkable pops up. I need to look more closely.

Perhaps because I have read in several texts that Es is not affected by the sunspot cycle (or not noticeably anyway) then I am reluctant to accept that it might be. The upside of the sunspot peak would be F-layer propagation which I have yet to see.

I doubt if harvesting the wheat really indicates much, but it feels like it does - and may be that is as good an predictor of Es propagation as the various websites which claim to know all about it.

Harvesting under way near GM4FVM, 18 August 2024

Whatever the cause, the effect is pretty clear. For a lot of the time (days on end) I have been looking at empty waterfalls and blank "band activity" lists. Thank goodness for aurora and meteor scatter.

Yes, they call it sporadic for a reason. So therefore it could recover tomorrow.

WELL, GET ON WITH IT.

73 Jim

GM4FVM