We're having a bit of a tussle between older reports from the NOAA (2008 it seems) and actually what's happenning with our nearest star. Yes it does affect us here, there's a few who've noticed that the coldest Northern Hemisphere winters seem to coincide with minimi, notably in the "Little Ice Age" in the 18th Century. Now some are predicting we're in for a fairly long lull inproceedings.
The trouble is, the Sun continues to throw stuff at us, and we've had a recent blast in our direction. I tend to agree with NW7US, we'll see how this pans out.
We've had propagation up on 10m but it seems mostly where I am related to Sporadic-E, certainly in its character, but I'm too far north to really notice anyway and a bit too close to the auroral zone. 20m had been staying open til quite late (~2100 UTC) but it's a band I tend to stay away from at moment, 17 and 15m being a little better for DX interest. I've not worked anything exotic on 10m, but at least I have finally nabbed SV9 on 6m.
Hang the expense!
It seems that this hobby has the definite ability to become a very expensive pastime, however after a joke remark was put forward in the club we have launched the "Poundshop Antenna Challenge" . The idea being to build an antenna using parts that aren't intended for that purpose, for a fiver (to our overseas reader that's about $8) at most, the idea being to put something that works together, using it and clocking up the points. It doesn't seem to have an actual prize for the best but we do think we could produce a suitably impressive certificate, even for the best heroic failure. You know, looks good, matches well but just doesn't seem to radiate at all.
My budget has hit £2.39 so far, and a 4 element quad for 2m should be the result, I just hope that putting 30W pep into it won't fry it that's all.
