The sun has been more active lately than it has been in many many years. There's been literally dozens of large flares and CME's in the last couple months.Skip on LSB 16 has been non-existent. LSB 35-40 hasn't been much better. I haven't heard it this quiet in years. The good side of that coin is that I am getting phenomenal local range on AM, FM and SSB.
It obviously isn't going to work all of the time, but it has worked well often enough that I'd still like to keep the reclaim LSB 16 effort alive.
We need an active sun for DX, but not too active, and right now we are seeing the results of a too-active-sun..........the ionosphere has been stirred like a pot of gumbo and it results in piss poor radio conditions.
Out here 38 has been pretty much the only channel with any DX lately, and it's been all California, Arizona and Utah by day and Hawaii and sometimes Australia in the evening. Which is still better than nothing at all !
It's very very rare to go through a whole day here with no conditions at all. Even on the worst days there's weak short openings and I manage to make a brief DX contact or two.