24MHz - Some analysis (updated)

The latest 'HF' section of the RSGB's magazine, RadCom, invited reports this month from those who have recently completed QSOs on the upper HF bands of 24 and 28MHz.

The assumption of the author was that these bands are only open at the moment due to Es propagation.  It's not an altogether incorrect assumption, although the impression I get from regularly operating 24MHz is that the band is doing pretty well for the depths of solar minimum.

I decided to quickly plot the total fraction of each month where I completed a 24MHz QSO, together with the fraction of the month with DX activity on the same band, and it looks like this:

Certainly, the recent past seems to indicate Es is the major player in propagation at the moment.  Meteoric inputs - and thus Es propagation - are greater from roughly the end of October to December, but there is not really the peak in propagation one might expect at 24MHz.

UPDATE:

I spent some hours dragging out all the 24MHz QSOs from my LoTW log today, and the results are very interesting.

Looking at the plot below, you can see that the peak month, or even season for 24MHz activity moves around a lot.  In the past couple of years, the pattern of activity has inverted compared to earlier years (the plot is based on QSOs with the same 3-ele LFA Yagi throughout).  Again, blue is fraction of each month with any activity, and orange the fraction of each month with DX (>2500 miles).

The polynomial trend line tends to show a slight increase in 24MHz activity, perhaps consistent with a slow upward trend in solar activity evident at the moment.  DX activity continues at fairly low levels compared to previous years, and the improvement on these longer paths is much slower to take place, and indeed is either still declining or just reaching a plateau at the moment.