The Band is Dead, And Other Rubbish...

It's no secret that the Sun is now approaching the quiet years of its endless cycle.  As a result, the higher HF bands of 12 and 10 metres have been much less active than even a year ago.

That said, it's often not clear whether the band is dead because of everybody acting like sheep and assuming, say, 12m is dead, or that there really is no propagation.

Heading for a lull.  The Sun is approaching solar minimum.

There also seems to be some lack of understanding amongst some operators in that 12m is frequently subject to sporadic E propagation.  Indeed, 12m can even be used successfully for auroral propagation, whether directly, by reflection off the auroral curtain, or indirectly, from auroral Es.  Because most hams are not in the auroral oval region, few know about this.

Sure, we can turn to models like VOACAP and the like, and they tend to be quite useful.  However, WSPR stations on 12m are very far and few between, and it's often the case that only station is active on 12m WSPR.  You only have to look at 6m WSPR during good propagation to realise that insufficinet stations give a very misleading result: often, you can see no links across WSPR stations, whilst someone is 59 on SSB!

Two nights ago, I called CQ on JT65A, 12m.  Straight away, I had a strong return from a PY station.  It was clear there ought to be far more stations on there, so I sent a question as to "why no ops?" to the cluster.

That did it!  Within seconds, the 12m band came alive with JT, RTTY and SSB.  The propagation mode, though most wouldn't realise it, was entirely multihop Es.

So it does seem that acting like sheep and assuming that, because nobody else seems to be there, there's no point transmitting, is a bit silly.

Next time you hear a 'dead' band, try being the one who sends the first signal, see what happens...