At the moment, I pretty much have my HF radio on 28.1246 MHz USB all of the time listening for QSPR and QRSS signals on the 10m band. Over the last few weeks and months, I've noticed plenty of solar noise from flares erupting on the sun.

The vast majority of these hardly move the S meter on the radio, it's just that I can hear the increase in noise level. At 16:47 UTC on the 14th of May 2024, there was a huge burst of noise and when I looked, the S meter was up at S6.

The is shown in the audio spectrum display above with time moving from right to left. The sudden onset of the solar noise can be seen as a result of the flare on the sun.

I knew that this flare was a really big enough and sure enough when I checked later, it turned out to be X8.7 solar flare and the largest one so far for the the current solar cycle.

I posted on Twitter /X that a big flare had occurred and Chris, G4IFX in England noted that he had heard the same thing on the 50 MHz band.

Larry, VO1FOG in Newfoundland got a screen capture of the solar noise while listening at 92.3 MHz  so it was certainly broadband as expected.

It also resulted in a big radio blackout on the HF bands. The question now is if this will result in a big aurora in the next day or two? We'll have to wait and see.

10th May 2024: I had the radio turned on in the background this morning and I noticed a large burst of noise from the sun. I had the SpectrumLab software running since yesterday and I took this screen grab.

Just to explain the image above...

1) I was listening on 28.1246 MHz USB which is the 10m WSPR & QRSS frequency.

2) Around 06:42 UTC, a meteor burnt up about 100kms above the west of England or Wales leaving an ionised trail behind. This lasted long enough that I was able to hear some of the QRSS signals from stations to the east of London, about 600kms to the east of me. The signals lasted for about a minute.

3) At about 06:43:30, the noise from a solar flare erupting on the sun reached the Earth and I heard the burst of solar noise as a loud hissing sound on 28 MHz. You can see this as the brighter colour in the image. It then faded slowly with some minor peaks over the next few minutes.

I later checked the NOAA website in the US and sure enough, there was a peak in the GOES X-Ray flux at about the same time. Link - https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-x-ray-flux

It looks as if it was a X3.9 burst from the sunspot group AR 3664.

Maximum 10 May 2024 06:54:00 GMT X3.9 Integrated flux: 4.4e-1 J m-2

I often hear solar noise on the 28 MHz band but this one was a bit stronger than usual.