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Even after the second worst year in the Space Age in terms of sunspot numbers, there are encouraging signs for ham radio contesters when it comes to sunspots and better propagation on the HF contest bands.
"Except for Christmas day, since December 9 sunspots have been visible every day," wrote Tad Cook K7RA in his ARRL Propagation Forecast Bulletin on New Year's Eve.
"Since December 26 we've been blessed with new sunspot group 1039," Cook wrote. "This is the sixth new sunspot group to emerge in December."
That's a big change from earlier in the year, which started with even less activity on the sun than 2008, when 266 days went by without a visible sunspot.
But with a "flurry" of sunspot action in December, 2009 narrowly avoided breaking that mark, ending up at 260 days without sunspots, 71% of the days in the last calendar year.
Does that mean that Solar Cycle 24 might finally be on its way? That HF contesters will again remember what it means when 10 and 15 meters actually "open" during a contest.
"If the past two years have taught us anything, however, it is that the sun can be tricky and unpredictable," said a story at spaceweather.com. "Stay tuned for surprises."
Even with the recent action on the sun, 2009 will go down as the third worst year in terms of sunspots since 1913, which had 311 spotless days.
As for what happens in 2010, we have been treated to repeated predictions from experts that Solar Cycle 24 was going to take off, as US government scientists and the space agency NASA have been forced to repeatedly update their sunspot forecasts.
For example, 2008 was supposed to be a year of increasing sunspot numbers and better high band propagation, as NASA announced the first sunspot of Cycle 24 on January 4, 2008.
"I think solar minimum is behind us," said sunspot forecaster David Hathaway said a few months after that.
But neither 2008 not 2009 turned out that way.
"No, there is nothing in the logic that says that there must be several low or several high cycles in a row," says solar researcher Leif Svalgaard. "It could equally well happen that there is only one."
In other words, no one's quite sure what's next.
As you can see from the most recently updated sunspot predictions from the US Government's Space Weather Prediction Center, the red line still ramps up suddenly, with a solar maximum predicted now in early 2013.
"I'd love to see the sunspot number go up," said one ham radio poster at the blog Watts Up With That.
"It’s highly annoying when band (HF radio) conditions just go completely to pot when the sun sets."
It was part of a rush of sunspots in the month of December, which prevented 2009 from having more sunspotless days than 2008, which had been the most since 1913.
How different is propagation? Just look at the 2009 ARRL 10 Meter contest, where NE9U operated W0AIH to the highest single operator claimed score of 415,830 points - that's down from the 2008 high of 449,624 points by WE3C.
Back in 2001 at the height of the sunspot cycle, Jim Neiger N6TJ won the ARRL 10 from ZD8Z on Ascension Island with 3,874 contacts, 278 mults and a final score of 3.33 million points.
It seems likely at this point that no station - not even any of the multi-ops in the US - will even claim half a million points - not even one-sixth of Neiger's score.
The last time any station went over 1 million points in the ARRL 10 was 2006, when CX5BW was the winner with 1.52 million. Only LR2F and AY8A were also over one million that year in the multi-op category.
The last single operator to go over 1 million was Jorge Diez CX6VM in 2005, with 1.04 million.
