Most of the hams that frequent this web site probably have spent many hours looking on the World Wide Web (WWW) for current solar and geomagnetic information. No one governmental agency provides everything needed to estimate propagation conditions. The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC),  the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the United States Air Force, and the United States Department of Commerce publish multiple daily reports that provide solar weather and geomagnetic activity information necessary for the prediction of High Frequency (HF) radio wave propagation. There are several alternative ways to harvest needed propagation information from these agencies instead of visiting multiple web sites. We would like to provide the amateur radio operator with information on using several of the alternative paths to solar and geomagnetic data from these agencies.

While the alternatives to solar weather data mining include using data published by a number of excellent space weather agencies outside of the United States as well as by quite a large number of likewise excellent privately controlled web sites, that is not what we intend to publish in the few short articles that are to follow. These articles will point to several non-WWW applications that allow the amateur radio operator to gather the same raw solar and geomagnetic data as well as several of the daily reports from the primary suppliers mentioned in the first paragraph.

 

Over the past few years amateur radio operators, that are also programmers, have found ways to collect current solar weather and geomagnetic indices and other near real-time data used for HF propagation forecasting without using web browsers. These techniques have been incorporated into several desktop applications that will interest many ham radio operators. In this, and several following articles, we will be publishing information on a few of the applications that this Webmaster has used to complement his own but less eloquent data collection program.

 

Technically the computer applications being mentioned here do go to the WWW or Internet to collect the data they present. It is the ham operator that does not have to go to the web. Hams using a web browser have to frequently refresh some of the pages displayed in the browser to keep seeing current data. Also the browser user has to constantly keep changing the pages being viewed to see all of the information he is interested in. There are times when a ham will be able to now-cast using the data on an individual web page. Seldom will one find everything needed for propagation forecasting on a single page.