Sad but true, as of today, July 16, 2014, the sun is spotless.  The last time that happened was on August 11, 2011.  SolarHam.com even compared the spotless sun to an orange today!

You can clearly see the double peak of Cycle 24 on the graph above.  Unless there is another outburst, it looks like the peak smoothed sunspot number of 75.4 was reached during November 2013, which was a first for solar observations (having the second peak larger than the first — the first being 66.9 in Februrary of 2012).

Cycle 24 remains the weakest solar cycle since Cycle 14 in 1906.  By the way, the expectation for the peak of Cycle 25, a decade in the future, is even lower than Cycle 24.

Time for 80 Meter DXing!

The Clipperton Island DXpedition has about 5 days remaining for their operation.  Signals into Rhode Island have been exceptionally good.  WB4SON reports working them on 160/80/40/30/20/17/15 and 12 meters using all modes (CW, SSB, Digital) in the past two days.  So far nothing has been heard on 10 meters during the times they are active on that band, but conditions on 10 meters have been quite poor recently. (Ed: Bob reports that he managed to work them on 10 meter CW as well)

TX5K has a wonderful real-time website that informs people what bands and modes are being used, and lets you know within a minute or two that you have a valid contact in their log.  Check it out here:  http://www.dxa2.org/

For those of you interested in what goes into a $250,000 DXpedition, you might find the book written to describe this DXpedition interesting.

This is the same gang that will be putting on a $1,000,000+ DXpedition to the Antarctic’s Heard Island next Jan/Feb.