For those who've been following the ups and down, you may have been aware that the lower bands, particular the 80m band (3.5 - 3.8MHz) has at times been on the bad end of apalling in terms of propagation. When the best DX you've managed in the RSGB's 80m Club Championship is 30 miles you know something's not right. After struggling to get half a dozen contacts in 90 minutes you can guess things are not right.
That was February, it's now the end of March and what a change. Last night it was back to old times it seems and wall to wall signals. I was actually using 12dB of attenuation on receive just to cut the intermodulation and a 1.5kHz bandwidth to deal with the SSB signals. This is not with a particularly good antenna for the band, which is quite low down and near buildings.
I almost welcomed back the hour and a half's mayhem on the band, but at least it proves it's not just been myself who's been having problems with the warmup of this solar cycle.
