Ducie Island was on the air and it was all we could do to pick them up . . . of course, they ARE on the other side of the world . . . .
Yeah, I can see where that could be a problem.
Also, I came across a nifty link that includes information about sunspot activity from some months ago. It’s from October 26th of last year: “Zero, zero, zero sunspots for 18 straight days now. A single sunspot appeared briefly October 6-7, no sunspots for four days prior, one sunspot for the final few days of September, and none for the three whole weeks prior to that.”
http://mt-shortwave.blogspot.com/2007/10/radio-propagation-report.html