After a (too) long period of inactivity, I had a nice chat today on 40 with Scott, NJ0E, in the fascinatingly named Dripping Springs, Texas. That's near Austin, for those who are unfamiliar with the geography. 40 meters sounded a little healthier today than it has in a while. Daylight hours on 40 here in north Texas have been mainly characterized by high noise levels and few stations. Many days the only station I can hear is the bible-quoting "CW practice" station at 7.035 MHz (or so, my dial is not too accurate).
At night, if the atmospherics aren't too bad, you can hear some truly fascinating DX on the low end of 40. Most nights there are one or two stations from Slovakia (OM3, OM5) around 7.020 ~ 7.030, and I have heard stations in England and Germany around there as well. No luck working them, though.
15 meters is mostly dead except for the occasional short opening, usually into South America here. Grayline propagation is sometimes pretty good, too. A couple of weekends back I listened for the F.I.S.T.S. CW sprint on 15 and heard absolutely nothing. When we go into a period of quiet sun, 15 gets really quiet.
I hope to be more active, if 40 will cooperate. I would like to get some more or less regular contacts on 40 who are on around midday during the week to talk with during my lunch break. Chasing DX is a lot of fun, but I would also like to have people to brag to when I get a rare one.
Oh, and for me, almost anything outside the 5 call area is a rare one.