Will HF become totally useless for DX?

[cmradio]

Some interesting observations here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627640.800-whats-wrong-with-the-sun.html?full=true

Mad scramble to the LowFER bands?

Peace!

[RF BURNZ]

This is what I call the "chicken little" reaction!  Something unusual happens, so suddenly 'the sky is falling".  Sunspots may be on a cycle, as they most likely are.  What if this is part of a 300-year cycle?  or 500 or a 1,000 cycle?  No one would know.  The "church" has pretty much destroyed any past history they disliked, so who's to know.  No records.  Sunsposts will come back and when they do, DX will be great once again.  Until then we have the 'scientists' who gave you "global warming" to try to scare you about the sun now!

[Tube Shortwave]

Let's be clear..

"The Church" did not destroy anything.  In fact, religion has done a lot to preserve history that was destined to be destroyed by everyone from the Romans to Khan, to Hitler.  Crazy people destroy historical artifacts, not any church.

If you want to blame a church for the destruction of historical matters, blame the catholics in particular.  Leave the rest of us out of it.

[syfr]

Oh there's plenty of dirt under everyones' religious carpet...no need to single any group out.

The thing is.... the premise is false.  Even at the ebb of the solar cycle, there's plenty of DX to work/hear. It's not as easy, nor is it in the same frequencies that it is at other times, but there's plenty to go around...

[Token]

I like how that article claims that predicitons of Solar Cycle 24 were that it was going to be a "doozy" and possibly the biggest in recorded history.  However, none of the predictions I read seemed to indicate it would be anything of the sort.  Prior to 2009 the predictions were that solar cycle 24 would be average to slightly above average, with several "experts" predicting low activity.

Here is an early 2007 NASA paper looking at predictions for solar cycle 24.  http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/SC24/May_24_2007_table.pdf

Note the predictions ran from a low of 42 to a high of 185.  The 1959 peak (biggest in recent history) was over 250, the 1947, 1979, and 1990 peaks (largest 3 after 1959) were all in the 200 region.  The lowest peak in the last 100 years was around 1929, peaking at just over 100.