Hello Grand Solar Minima?

[ChrisSmolinski]

[KaySeeks]

The sunspots must not be from California. The minima is not fashionably late.

[Josh]

It'll only be, what, 3 years till the next peak?

We can wait for dx that long.

[RobRich]

I skimmed through 20m voice on Monday afternoon. Only a couple or so active QSOs. Admittedly I was using the 148' loop-on-ground, which is not exactly a great 20m antenna, but still. o.0 IIRC, 40m voice was not much better.

Further up the HF bands, I used to occasionally talk on 11m SSB back in the day, but I have not bothered in a *long* time. Ideally, just a few watts with a simple dipole or vertical can work much of North America.... if ya' can find actually workable 11m propagation. I am not saying 11m is deserted completely, but even 27.025 has been mostly static here more often than not for quite awhile now.

10m SSB largely is vacant here, too. Further up, has anyone heard 10m FM simplex in recent months... err, years? Last time I even heard one of the now seemingly elusive 10m FM repeaters probably was a year or two ago.

[ChrisSmolinski]

I skimmed through 20m voice on Monday afternoon. Only a couple or so active QSOs. Admittedly I was using the 148' loop-on-ground, which is not exactly a great 20m antenna, but still. o.0 IIRC, 40m voice was not much better.

Further up the HF bands, I used to occasionally talk on 11m SSB back in the day, but I have not bothered in a *long* time. Ideally, just a few watts with a simple dipole or vertical can work much of North America.... if ya' can find actually workable 11m propagation. I am not saying 11m is deserted completely, but even 27.025 has been mostly static here more often than not for quite awhile now.

10m SSB largely is vacant here, too. Further up, has anyone heard 10m FM simplex in recent months... err, years? Last time I even heard one of the now seemingly elusive 10m FM repeaters probably was a year or two ago.

I monitor 20m SSTV 24/7 on 14230 USB. Activity has been improving lately, I suspect it is more seasonal than anything else.

11m openings seem to be sporadic. Every so often I'll notice the band is full of signals, but it is a rare event. I rarely check 10m, I've never noticed much there. Perhaps that is due to low activity by operators, propagation should be nearly identical to 11m.

It'll only be, what, 3 years till the next peak?

[Josh]

Sitting on 20m and the band noise is absent. A few ssb sigs, hardly any cw, almost same for 40m. My goto S4285 day sig on 13031.2 (FUE French Navy, Martinique) is hardly above the noise floor. 6WW (French Navy, Dakar Senegal) on 16951.5 is out of the question. FUE is now peaking -120dBm.

[BoomboxDX]

Maunder here we come. :-)

[pinto vortando]

Maunder here we come. :-)

Record snow and cold here in Michigan.  Got a 9" dumping of snow yesterday and temps
forecast to drop to 6F tonight.