Jim

20 meters is mostly a daytime band, especially now that we are near the
bottom of the sunspot cycle. What that means, though, is daylight at
midpath, and on 20, paths tend to be long (even for QRP). So if the sun is
overhead say, 500 miles from you, there is a decent chance of hearing
something.

Depending on how far up in 9-land you are, 20 may close fairly early.
However, up here in the frozen north, there is often over the pole
propagation that seems to open up an hour or two after the band "closes".

If you listen during the day, you will hear the signals shift from the east
to the west with the sun. When all you can hear is California, the band
will probably be closing soon. But then again, depending on all sorts of
vagaries, it may soon be time to listen for Hawaii, Japan or Australia.

Don't be afraid to make a call. On 20 CW, 5 watts is more than enough. 20
is a fairly quiet band, and QRP signals don't get absorbed the way they do
on the lower frequencies. Once I tried a contest at a half a watt, and my
QSO rates were barely different than at 5 which in turn really weren't
noticably different than 100. They did fall off as I started to approach a
tenth, though. This is with a dipole at about 30 feet - nothing fancy.

Early morning is nice for Europe. Midday the states. Sunset look for South
America.

If you keep an eye on the propagation numbers, here are a few clues. The
"flux" as it applies to 20 really has to do with how CLOSE you can talk.
You will find that contacts closer than about 500 miles are tough on 20
unless the flux is high. A high flux might also help 20 stay open a little
longer after the sun sets. The K index jumping tends to indicate that we
have taken a hit from a burp the sun has made. An intial rapid rise will
mean the bands will be very noisy for a short while, but in an hour or two
propagation will suddenly get very good for a little while. Then, a few
days later, we -might- get hit with the follow on, which will essentially
shut things down for a day. Whether we get hit depends on the exact place
on the sun that burped. The initial radiation blast travels very quickly to
earth, and the matter that follows takes a lot longer. Thats why the
multi-day delay. The initial radiation blast causes the earth's magnetic
field to rock and roll for a few hours, which is why the noise. When it
settles down, though, the ionosphere is ionized as if the flux were high.
Then when the matter reaches earth (if it does) it will badly distort the
magnetic field for a day or sometimes more, making for very bad conditions.

If you can find some writings by Paul Harden, read them. This guy has lots
of great stuff on propagation.

...

"J Shrum" wrote in message
...
Greetings. I've only been a ham for a couple years. Not really done
anything
w/ it however. Just homebrewed a thing or two, but never made any QSO's. I
just acquired a 5w 20m rig (all my budget could allow).
Can someone give me any tips on how to know when 20m is open? What time of
year or time of day is typically good for 20?
I tried looking over some MUF charts... but its greek to me at this point.
I've tried googling, but unless I know exactly how to phrase my search,
I'm
coming up empty...

Any pointers would be great.
Thanks
Jim
KC9FFX