[CQ-Contest] need thoughts on how to cope with era of no sunspots

[Bill Parry]

How old are you Charlie? I have been through several sunspot cycles since
the late 50s and this is nothing new.  If you have been around for a while
this is same old...same old. What discussion? Besides the bands are not
dead. I hear your part of the world on 20 M in the morning fairly often.
Worked XV9NPS and he had a good signal. In the late evenings EU and the deep
Russians are common almost every night.  40 is not great in the evening
because of the QRN here in Texas but I work EU almost every night and the
mornings into JA the path is great. We have basically lost 10 except to SA
and 15 is puny but this ALWAYS happens as the sunspots go away. But...they
will be back. 

Be calm.  The sunspots will be back. I was just thinking the other night
when I was working a UA in zone 18 on 20 that the conditions are pretty darn
good for there to be no sunspots. I have been trying to concentrate on
getting my DXCC totals on 17 and 30 to a more respectful level.

I am thinking about doing a single band 15 for the IARU this weekend. I bet
we can work a bunch of countries. 

Bill W5VX 

-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of
Charles Harpole
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2016 8:35 PM
To: CQ-Contest Reflector
Subject: [CQ-Contest] need thoughts on how to cope with era of no sunspots

The current sign of stretches of no sunspots are a significant challenge to
ham radio and to multi-band contesting particularly.  Maybe we hams will
have to just put up with the prospect of absent propagation on 20m and up,
but it is said possible that the 'good old days' of great propagation are
over for most current hams' lifetimes.

It seems time to formulate real plans for possible bad condx.  Personally, I
do not know how to cope, but believe we need a hobby-wide discussion about
what to do.  Maybe there is some technology to help or very wide spread use
of remote stations (even crediting contest credit for contacts
originating from several, wide-spread operating locations?).   Receiving
'below the noise' may be a solution?  HAARP to heat up 10m?   Semaphore?

Lets get real and have a planned discussion with concrete "thoughts out of
the box" to face really bad times !
73
Charly, HS0ZCW
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