Operating an aurora

Last Updated on May 12, 2024 by John Berry

The pages here indicate what’s needed to optimise operating during a radio aurora.

First some important notes

If the extreme storm of 10th and 11th May 2024 gave us anything, its the need to take care when claiming an auroral contact. QSOs were claimed universally to be auroral. It’s likely many weren’t. There are three tests:

Have Kp and dst risen after mid-day and the radio aurora kicked off in late afternoon? The mid-day sun is needed to give a background excitation. Radio auroras in the morning and evening are less likely.

Are you pointing at the station you’re working? If you are, it might be some other propagation medium that’s supporting your QSO. You should be pointing at the auroral oval – northwards.

Are you experiencing Doppler distortion and Doppler shift? Doppler shift on 50MHz will need dedication to copy. Doppler shift on 144MHz will make copy damned difficult. And the more you subtend the angle, the greater the shift.

Those points said, let’s get some understanding of what it’s about. The following video gives an excellent summary of SSB operation during a radio aurora. In this case it’s on the 6m band but it could equally be on 2m.

Excellent video on operation during a radio aurora

Here are some broad ideas about operating during an aurora. These are taken from many web sources.

Operating an aurora

  • Be ready. Auroras don’t last long. Monitor space weather for Kp going high to indicate a geomagnetic storm. Monitor dst, the momentary geomagnetic disturbance for an increase over 200nT.
  • Keep overs and QSOs short.
  • Be prepared to pan your antennas east and west of north. Stations available may be in central or southern Europe but you will need to point somewhat northeast to work the path via the aurora.
  • Be able to tilt your antennas to gain maximum flexibility in path optimisation.
  • Have a good quality station with multi-element beam antenna, low noise receiver amplified and reasonable power level.
  • Be frequency agile. Watch out for Doppler shift and use your RIT control to adjust your receiver frequency rather than using your central VFO to have the TX frequency track RX frequency. Then cancel your RIT on moving to another QSO.
  • Listen carefully in SSB voice calls. And be eager to shift to CW. And if you can’t do CW, learn.