The sun's output sure has made the bands a lot quieter than they were just a few weeks ago.  My first experience with ham radio was fun due to the super solar flares the peaked the bands.  I can recall witnessing at least 4 different solar showers that would shut the bands down for 15 to 30 minutes.  One of them happened during a Field Day event probably in 67 it seems like.  Boy, I hope when one of them super X flares blows, the sun is pointed in the opposite way.  I have seen the flare effect even as low as 80 meters.  Every signal on that band, and it was wall to wall activity back then, sounded like the polar fluctuation you often can hear on 20 meters over the north pole when working a Russian and sometimes any of the northern European countries.  In that case, I figured we were getting Aurora bounce effect but I had never seen the Aurora curtains effect a band as low as 80 meters before then.  I started at the bottom of the band, 3.5, and tuned slowly up the band and checked every signal I could copy.  They all were fluttering.  I stopped, in what was the 80 meter novice band in those days, because I copied a local station calling CQ and he lived about 10 miles from me.  Even his ground wave signal was fluttering like he was over the north pole.  I couldn't believe it.  I tuned into the phone band as I made my way to 4.0 MHz, and a lot of the sideband signals were impossible to understand the waver was so prominent.  It was like trying to listen to jello wiggling around in a bowl.  Interesting solar and propagation phenomena to have personally witnessed.

Phil.
K0NX