Years ago, perhaps in the 1980s, I was operating
Field Day and signals disappeared. We checked
the rig to see what button we had hit by mistake,
checked our cables, and stepped outside to see
if our antenna was still up. About that time the
operators from the other stations came out, doing
the same thing. Basically, all the bands were
dead as a doornail.
After about 45 minutes, signals started to drift
back in, and in little more than an hour things
we’re mostly back to normal.
The ionosphere can do strange things sometimes...