DX - Sunspot - Solar cycle 25 - Not as bad as it looks?

Hi all,

Some of you know that we're ramping up for solar cycle 25.....for others that means, "The skip's a coming!"

For the 'Newbies' it means you can be chatting to someone stateside, (USA), as easily as catching some sporadic-E skip to Europe and sometimes like they're down the road from you!!

All exciting stuff, but the general consensus is that it might not be as good as all that...

Hams had it good in the 50's and 60's, those who hit the American CB AM fad in the 70's had it good too. In the 80's, for those of you not practicing their DJ skills on the new UK27/81, we also had it good and I have fond memories of those days of CB DXing.

The last couple of cycles have been a bit, shall we say, "meh"....
(Which is why you youngsters and newbies think us old gits were chatting out of our backsides with our old CB DX stories!)

The opinions for the next cycle are all a bit "meh" too..........but not all 'predictions' can be right can they?

The National Centre for Atmospheric Research has released an interesting paper for their predictions on Solar cycle 25 which doesn't look at all too bad.

If you like science papers, graphs, etc. (or just a plain old weirdo like me ), click the link below for their paper on it.
(It's a pdf file, about 3Mb)


National Center for Atmospheric Research


They reckon it might well be a good cycle....maybe even, to use the technical term, a flipping good cycle!

But, don't get too excited yet. They might be wrong, it is a prediction after all, and the solar cycle is 11 years long.......so you've got at least a couple of years to wait yet!


Personally for me, I hope the ticker holds out, I don't crash down the stairs breaking me neck and my false teeth hold up for a decent chat to our American buddies


All the best,
Victor

Well over past few weeks when we have had a really hot sunny day I have heard  Stateside on Channel 6 AM very very faint in and out sporadic though but it was there ,its the channel known to us old school CBers  as the Superbowl as named by the American operators,  basically its loads of stations on there seeing who has the most power and trying to out do each other when I mean power I mean running nothing under 1Kw
, and sometimes because of conditions and the skip running right as Victor said we can get back to them ourselves by sometimes using low ish power or if using no more 100wats which no lie I've have done myself many a time back in the old days ,if this happens again it will be brilliant and you that are new to CB or  old CBer who never experienced it originally will freak out on your first contact, let's hope it happens again, in fact if we have a solar cycle like we had back then be prepared to talk to the world and not just Europe.

The Sun does what it wants and not what humans predict but the paper was an interesting read and the strength of cycle 15 and its preceeding 14/15 nadia gives hope .
Hearing the Superbowl at this time of year has nothing to do with the Sun cycle but multi hop sporadic E via the jet stream and is there every year May>August, on Saturday I had seven contacts into the USA on 10 metre SSB .
73

I have heard Stateside on 10m SSB myself pretty well TBH but being not licensed I cant go back to them ,the reason I mentioned about the Superbowl was really for benefit of the new CBers and the one who never experienced it and unlicensed operators TBH, alot of my licensed mates have had quite a few contacts with Stateside stations on Amateur frequencies recently plus alot further.

Of course some bands are alot more easy to work DX on than others , 20m is known as the DX band and even at one of the lowest Solar minimums in living memory worldwide communication has still been possible  , as regards distance that really has to be put into geographical location /number of operators  etc , working Brazil is further than Tajikistan I would guess but the latter I count as my best on 10m SSB this year ( so far ).

Martin mate,

You're quite right, the first time someone experiences 'proper skip' on their CB's they will freak out and won't believe it!

I remember well going to the Chelsea Bridge run in London many moons, (flipping decades!), ago and a guy had a bootful of mid band AM CB's in his yank tank American car, of course illegally selling them
I was so stoked I borrowed money from my pals to buy one of these 'exotic' CB radios and plonked for a shiny silver General Electric. That was the CB bug bitten!

I'd fair old gotten into it, chatting to new radio mates, sitting up til the small hours on the London nets, everything CB.
So the first time I had more noise than usual and this American accent voice breakthrough I was perplexed. I gave him a shout thinking he must be on one of the East Anglian air bases......No, he was sitting in his farmhouse in......the good old US of A!

I remember swearing at him and telling him he could sling his hook with his "wind-up"...took him quite some chat to finally convince me he was actually in the USA....How could that be possible?

One of the 'old-uns' on a London net explained 'skip' to me with avid interest. That was it, I had to get me a sidebander and that as they say, was that

If it's a good season, those that have never experienced it are going to be super stoked! Then those blissful stories can start all over again.



Of course, years later someone tried to 'explain' it to me with his "Fine Business, Old Man, Hi-Hi" attitude, (you can guess can't you?)

Solar cycles mean different things for different people....

That's why I posted this in the 11m/27MHz DX discussion

Polar-E, Sporadic-E, Equitorial-E, Sunspot, whatever.....for us CBers it just plain old exciting as hell SKIP.


All the best,
Victor

I remember in the mid 2000's I use to hear a lot more countries than what you hear now apart from Italians bloody ell  we use to hear them back in the 70s pre legal days blocking us out on little 40ch AM sets lol, but as I said back in the 2000s I use to hear stuff from as far away as U.A.E (United Arab Emirates) , Greece, Turkey Cyprus,  Russia,  the U.A.E station was a very powerful station he was even stronger than the Italian ones lol , the one than is my best and I've never done again was I was just listening and on T5 and it was quite-ish and I heard a division number calling 43 ????? thought what's that division so I called back just to see if I could get them to find out where there was he was pretty in the back of the box but clear well to my surprise I made contact I was using about 300w on USB only to find out he was in Australia,  I was gobsmacked  well we QSOed for about 2mins before the skip just dropped out I was so shocked I forgot about asking for QSL card and I've never got to them again I still heard them now and then but never got another copy .

Watch this 

Fingers crossed it will be a good cycle with lots of contacts.

There has not been a SC transition since what might be classed as reliable records began ( SC10 ) like SC24>SC25 , there have been minimums where the nadar year of spotless days have been higher than the 274 in 2019 and there have been SC with a higher spotless day count than the -1 year or +1year but there has not been one where all three years have been so high so take the following with a pinch of salt.
We are now in the second year of the new Solarcycle  and the spotless day count for this period for the big cycles since SC10  ( SC11,18,19,21,22) had either ZERO spotless days or for SC11 two spotless days. The mid range group ( SC 10,15,17,23,20 ) ranged from 2>20 and the low group (SC12,13,14,16,24) ranged from 24> 45 spotless days in the second year. We currently are on 25 spotless days and only in February so on that evidence if indeed it is evidence it looks like being a low cycle but even that will have a good few years where the higher HF will be open world wide.
"The Sun does what it wants not what humans predict." 
ps the guy in that video hasnt a clue LOL

Theres a couple of small spots atm in the North West of the Sun , which can be clearly seen on the SDO HMI intestity image https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_HMII.jpg .
The spots are small at the moment and would also need to stay for 24 hours ( ish ) to be given a number.