excerpts from letter to RB Cooper Mar 11, 1970 regarding Mar 8 magnetic storm VHF effects
all times CST (GMT-6) - some of these near-contemporaneous notes may have minor differences
with my comments on the http://www.qsl.net/wa5iyx/ms030870.htm page.
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March 8:  here we go

        - pre-noon F2 across U.S. not hitting 32-MHz region

          1305, casually tune and find WA5TTH on F2 bs
                she sez been going 2 hrs. but good only last hour.
                W4UWH and WB4DVZ hrd wkg
                signals generally not very strong
          1330, BS out

                tune for the next 3 hours waiting for something

          1620, note a pickup in 33-MHz FD, KCC 482, and then faint
                50-MHz BS

          1630, 50-MHz BS not faint anymore !
                W5WAX loud & telling of aurora on 2 since noon
                K6QEH, K4QKR loud with many weaker W6, 7, 4

          1640, wk K4QKR (sez aurora in Carolinas 30 min prior)
          1644, wk K6QEH
          1652, wk K5WWQ (that's getting Austin the hard way)
                band filling with W0, 8, and 9
                many W6's after W2, 8, and 9
          1722, wk K5VRY
          1732, wk K9EQA
    ----  1748, QRM suddenly builds up, KP4's in on direct F2
                4 on s.s.b. and as many or more on a.m.; TV Ch 2
                jammed (nil 3) (KP4 ? YV ?)
                KP4's 30 db or more above BS levels
          1745, wk KP4DCY (maybe DZY)
          1800, KP4's rapidly fizzle out
                BS remaining most W4, W5, some W7
          1803, wk WA5NOB
          1810, BS out very suddenly
          1830, 28-MHz dead already

          2000, 27-MHz Es Ia.
               lingers on after 2200 mostly blips and Gulf boats
          2400
....
 comments: I wish you'd been still on KV4 on Mar 8. I also wish some YV's
           had gotten in on it. K5WWQ said he had hrd some W1 (aurorae?).
           I had so much noise in n.e. that it wouldn't have done any good
           to  look there. Most BS was peaking s.e. to s. I didn't hear
           any Calif north of Visalia. There must have been at least 100
           stations in the first 50kHz of the band. Half the time I was
           stupified listening to BS as far north as Kalamazoo, Mich.
           The KP4's could have made better use of the opening if they'd
           played it like a contest instead of 5 or 6 min QSO's. Their
           limited English doesn't help either. s.s.b.: KP4DCY, DEC, DBK,
           AFK. That 20-min opening may be the only direct F2 in this
           hemisphere I will ever hear on 50-MHz

Mar 8 BS states: Ala; Ariz; Ark; Calif; Fla; Ga; Ill; Ia; La; Mich;
                 N Mex; NC; Ohio; Tex;  Okla; W. Va.

         I probably missed a lot more in all that QRM.
===========================================================================================
A similar report, with minor variations, was sent Mar 16 to QST VHF Editor K0CER.

This was at a time when all of the future Cycles until beyond 2000 were forecasted to be
downhill, thus my dismal comment about Northern Hemisphere direct 50-MHz F2.  Luckily they
were wrong, and Cycles 21-23 bested the "runt" Cycle 20 by a considerable amount!  The
jury is still out, however, on the limited prospects for the current Cycle 24 VHF effects.

Note that there was no Internet (or even a 28.885-MHz net) to give anyone advance warning
of the VHF propagation conditions that were transpiring in other regions of the country
on this day.  Thus one had only their own limited perspective until the reports were later
aggregated at some point afterwards.  Consider how much "easier" things are now with all
the folk "plugged in" to various spotting and real-time geophysical data resources!