When can I work them on which band? Type your city and your target's city. The planner shows today's sunrise and sunset at both ends, the great-circle path on a live grey-line globe , and ranks bands using current solar conditions . All computation runs in your browser. Nothing is stored.

Where + who

Type a city or hit "Use my location".
or pick a DXCC entity
Type a city or pick an entity.

Grey line now

UTC time
Subsolar latitude
Subsolar longitude
Solar declination
Day of year
Subsolar point (sun overhead)
Twilight band (±0.5 h around terminator)
Terminator line
Your location pin
Target location pin + great-circle path

Drag to rotate. Auto-rotate resumes after a moment.

Path

Distance (short)
Bearing (short)
Long-path distance
via the antipode
UTC offset
your time vs theirs

Today (UTC) at both ends

You
Target
now

Recommended windows

Current solar conditions: SFI · K-index · (details)
Pick a target above to see windows.

Why the grey line opens HF

Sun F2 layer (~250 km, reflects HF) D layer (~70 km, absorbs HF when ionized) Earth Noon ray short path. D layer ionizes. HF gets absorbed. Terminator ray long horizontal path absorbs UV before reaching D layer. F2 stays lit. D recombines. HF window opens.

Short version: the terminator ray's long horizontal path through the upper atmosphere absorbs UV before it can ionize the D layer, so for roughly thirty minutes on either side of dawn or dusk, low-band HF (160 m, 80 m, 40 m) opens up. Full reference on the physics and the operator's checklist →

Solar declination, equation-of-time, sunrise/sunset computed locally using NOAA's solar calculator formulas. Live solar flux + K-index from N0NBH / NOAA SWPC. City lookup powered by OpenStreetMap / Nominatim. Coastlines: Natural Earth 1:110m. DXCC entities: AD1C cty.dat. Data sources → · Reference: greyline →