I thought it might be useful to see what the solar conditions were this morning when I worked Alaska on 160-m. We had a solar disturbance and sunspot making things interesting for us a few days ago (spot 2736), but that had just rotated around to the other side of the sun. The increase in solar activity energized the F-layer for a bit at the expense of increased D-layer absorption. With the sunspot gone, the D-layer faded quickly as the F-layer retained some of its energy, allowing multi-hops to be effective on 160-meters.
The biggie was the Kp-factor, which had been averaging about 3 the last few days, but had quietened down to 1 or less this morning.
In addition, D-layer absorption was non-existent globally
