A couple of months ago, at the W4UA meeting they had a presentation on HF. At the time I didn't yet have an HF radio, but the presenter used an HF propegation tool that I thought was impressive: http://www.bandconditions.com/index.htm
The website is rather simple and it shows bar graphs indicating the current, real time, propagation conditions for the different bands. It is designed to automatically refresh in your browser (and with up to date data) every 30 seconds, making it very much real time.
From the instructions page:
The website is rather simple and it shows bar graphs indicating the current, real time, propagation conditions for the different bands. It is designed to automatically refresh in your browser (and with up to date data) every 30 seconds, making it very much real time.
From the instructions page:
This standard is based on a 1 watt transmitter connected via RG-8X coax to a halfwave dipole 25 feet high with the major lobe facing East/West. A band condition that provides a minimum of a 3 hop circuit i.e. 3 reflections, 3 landings and 3 skipzones is assigned a value of 100. This is just a minimum as band openings often provide much better propagation but these conditions are not indicated past the 100 scale. All Scales are adjusted to the individual propagation characterstics of each band. The BQI values are the same across all bands.
USAGE GUIDE
100 = Best for 1 Watt or less QRP, QRPp, QRPe - Band wide open
70 -100 = Reliable SSB QSO's 100 Watts or less - Any ANT
51 - 69 = SSB requires AMP - Best DX for ANTs with main lobes 30 to 60 degrees from horizon
36 - 50 = SSB requires AMP - Best DX for ANTs with main lobes 0 to 30 degrees from horizon
19 - 35 = NVIS type ANTS work best here - Typically single hop circuits - Regional QSO's only
0 - 18 = Groundwave ONLY - typically 25 to 35 miles - Vertical ANTs work best here