Don ,
just think, we'll be world wide on the lower bands while ole Sol is resting. Your 160M sig should fly over the ponds a little more now. Praise the Lawd!!
Why aren't the lower bands packed solid right now, whenever the band is quiet on a Friday or Saturday night? 20m usually goes dead pretty early in the evening, and forget about 17, 15, 12, or 10. The only reliably usable HF bands we have during the hours of darkness are 160, 80 and 40.
In previous solar minima, 75 would be so crowded that it would take a while to find a clear spot to transmit on a weekend night, particularly if you were running AM. I have even seen it that way on 160 back during the 80's and 90's, after LORAN was taken off and most of the amateur band restored. Of course, 40m phone was practically unusable because of the broadcasters.
This time around, even on Friday and Saturday nights when there happens to be little QRN, there are plenty of blank spots to operate on 75, 160 is still very sparce, and I don't hear that much on 40m after about 0200 GMT. I noticed a big increase in 40m activity right after the broadcasters vacated 7.1-7.2, but even that has dwindled as the novelty has worn off (I am talking about SSB as well as AM).
Even during some of the most notoriously obnoxious slopbucket QuaRMtests, like Sweepstakes and the PenisSylvania QSO Party, the past few years there have been plenty of open spots in between QuaRMtesters to operate AM without too much hassle.
Of course, the expansion of the phone bands and lifting of 40m broadcasters has undoubtedly brought us some relief. This should be an interesting upcoming radio season.
