I think the perspective from the more northerly latitudes is quite different
than further south. In W1 land we're more adversely affected by absorption
associated with high auroral activity. I monitor the NOAA Web site
http://www.sel.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html quite a bit. When the auroral ovals
start extending into the Northern U.S., we suffer a bigger propagation hit than
people further south. I've seen this happen repeatedly over the last two or
three seasons, especially during the contest weekends on 160.
Not surprisingly the polar paths are the ones that take the biggest hit during
high sunspot years. JA's have been pretty rare here the last few seasons. I
remember in 1987, during the sunspot low from two cycles ago, the band opened
to JA on an almost daily basis during mid-winter of that year. On the good
days, the JA QRM in the old JA window sounded like 20 meters, with stations
stacked up every couple hundred Hz from 1907 to 1912 kHz. The sunspot minimum
of the 1990's was not as good, however, in this respect.
I spend a lot of time on 80m, too. The polar path to JA really suffers during
high sunspots. In fact the large majority of JA's there are worked on the SW
skew path around the sunspot peaks. Around the troughs, however, the direct
path predominates.
Also, as I've mentioned a number of times, I monitor a number of lowband
beacons. Over two decades I've found the same beacons are louder, more
consistently, during low sunspot years.
73, John W1FV
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