Cycle 24 Approaching Record Sunspot Count

Current sunspot count is 196

Polar Path as of 8 Jan 2013

Good afternoon as the Buddipole off center fed dipole is listening to a swarm of CW signals on thirty meters. I've recently logged a couple of stations on the same wavelength located northwest of my QTH (ie. Oregon and Washington) and Five Cities DXers are curious why we aren't hearing at the DX level?

My question is, "Is there a relationship between aurora oval, latitude, and hearing at the DX level on the coast of California?"

For example, several of us are low power, low profile with dipole antenna systems and, given previous experiences with far less optimal numbers, we are not hearing much DX in our cans. Wavelengths like 10 and 12m seem almost void of activity however 30m CW is very active at least from the Shell Beach shack.

Our gray line is fast approaching and I'm going to pump a few CQs into the ionosphere on 30m CW in order to test 'good' propagation at night as suggested by the widgets. In the meantime, Cycle 24 has maintained its record count since November of 2011 and we are a spot or two away from a a new record. Let's see what happens in the next 24 hours?

73 from the Shell Beach shack.