Just as a follow up, the new AT-100PROII tuner was defective.  HRO told me to return it for a full refund or to swap it - no questions asked.  I elected the refund as I didn't feel like the marginal improvement I had anticipated, at best, was worth trying another unit.  I know that ever so often a bad unit can slip through so, for now, I'll just continue to rely on the Kenwood's built-in tuner.

I believe that there was one station open on 80!  That still registered so pathetic with respect to the other bands that I just didn't give it much credit.  Nice to know that "it ain't just me or my rig!" I'll have to learn to be more patient.

Damn!  I hadn't thought about that!  The inability of the TS 2000 tuner to reconcile an excessively high SWR, on occasion, is the main reason I bought the external tuner.  Most of the time the Kenwood's internal tuner worked great, so I didn't often see/hear the high SWR protection kick in.  Thanks for the reminder.

I just ordered an automatic antenna tuner to use with my Kenwood TS 2000 transceiver.  The tuner will be connected to the #1 antenna connection on the rig and the two current antennas will be re-connected to the tuner.  This will leave an open connection on the rig for the time being until I hook a 6 meter antenna to the #2 connection.  I know that it takes two positive moves to switch antennas on the rig but s--- happens!  I can't figure out if the TS 2000 is protected against a screw-up like that if I accidentally tried to transmit on the open connection???

It was the lack of propagation across all bands simultaneously that had me wondering???  I understand how the loss of one or two bands is quite normal.

I'm not on the air on a regular enough basis to be able to tell whether I have an equipment problem -or if a sudden and dramatic loss of reception from one day to the next - or even within a single day - is a normal phenomena with HF???  In example, yesterday afternoon I was enjoying a wide range of contacts all across HF.  Around dinner time I shut the rig down, returning two or three hours later to virtually no contacts across all bands - and yes, a lot of static!  I have a G5RV plus a Transworld TW 2010.  The phenomena was typical on both antennas.  It doesn't seem logical to me that the rig would act up from being shut down and then being fired up again - so is there any other explanation?  Is a total reduction in activity common to HF?  I'm in a fairly benign area for outside interference - buried utility lines and country environment, with no nearby commercial/industrial facilities.  The rig is a TS 2000, operating barefoot.  I'm not yet proficient enough to be using code so all of my contacts are voice.  Any thoughts on what I might be experiencing?

Just wondering what we can expect from this unusually large solar flare forecast for Sunday???