So far this one is nothing like 1979 nor the 1989 cycle.
In the 1979 cycle I was working mainly 15 meters and routinely would qso with mobile stations in Europe, Hawaii and Africa an other locations.
One ham, a ZE in Rhodesia, who I frequently talked to on 15 SSB used what he called a Horical mobile antenna, it was around a 4 foot vertical element then bent horizontal to meet the Rhodesian mobile laws for antennas hence the Horical whip as he called it.
There were other world wide hams also operating frequently on 15ssb/cw who were active during the 1979 peak along with one frequently heard ham from Oman who was a regular on 15 SSB, then there were the other SSB ops such as too many to mention 4X4 guys from Israel and numerous other middle east hams , then the Indian Ocean guys such as Mayotte Island, Diego Garcia and other Indian Ocean hams.
The above nice dx along with years of VR6TC in Pitcairn Island and an endless supply of Z'Ls, VK's, too many rare pacific hams to mention but some which were memorable were KC6 Caroline Island, numerous Midway, Guam, thousands of JA's and other hams throughout the Pacific and Asia made the late 1970's a DX heaven.
Then the 1989 peak and it was even better than 1979, in fact so much that worldwide FM qso's with 25 watts were the norm on 29.6 FM whereas the previous cycle was mostly SSB/CW.
So far with this cycle and even though many so called solar experts say that this cycle is moving along great, it is still nothing like the years from 1975 to 1979 and 1986 to 1991 from looking back at my logs. Even the start of the 1989 peak around 1985 were great years and this cycles start still does not compare to the start of those cycles.
As for the late 1950's peak? well I was born at the end of the 50's but my father in law and his 3 brothers told me stories about the 1950 years and the dx that they worked and it made the late 70 and late 80's look like the hams who came after the 1960's got royally short changed.
