Is skip pretty common?

[Chubaca]

Installed my CB a little while back and have been playing around with it. I seem to be getting a lot of skip transmissions on receive and I was wondering if that was pretty common? Im in michigan and so far ive picked up on a guy from southern california, a guy from georgia, from florida, and chicago (not all that far really). I also seemed to get some kind of transmission from an airport where they were talking about boarding a flight to vegas.

Thought it was pretty cool, I had heard of skip but didnt expect to experience it so often.

[Circuit Breaker]

It's common - but doesn't happen all the time. We're currently at the peak of the sunspot cycle (as dismal as it is) so skip will happen more frequently. At the bottom of the cycle, you may not hear any skip for days or even weeks - and when you do, it's more likely sporadic E (Es) skip.

[radionut373]

It's common - but doesn't happen all the time. We're currently at the peak of the sunspot cycle (as dismal as it is) so skip will happen more frequently. At the bottom of the cycle, you may not hear any skip for days or even weeks - and when you do, it's more likely sporadic E (Es) skip.

To add to that you will find that after darkness most of the skip conditions will be gone.

[Kaos]

It has seemed (lately) that every time I cut my radio on for any amount of time I get skip. The only thing is it doesn't last very long (most of the time). It's funny to hear. My radio will be quiet and then, all of a sudden, it will light up w/ activity. A few seconds/minutes later it's back quiet.

[wulff]

I don't think it will ever be as good as the peak in the early 70's I was living in Southern mich at the time (before I came back west) and night or day it sounded like a hornets nest! That was when my brother and I had XTALs cut to go off the standard 23 channels.
For those that were alive you might remember sideband rigs were EXPENSIVE! So we used home built tube linear's. I remember one night it was rolling in from the west and south so strong that when I gave out a general DX CQ I had dozens of stations coming back, I was running 100 watts on a Mosley 3-element (I put an antenna rotor on the boom so I could go horizontal) I thought if I cut my power back it would help but every time I keyed I had way to many coming back to answer, finally I shut off my box and was still rolling into the South 'owning the channel'!
What is funny is when the skip is rolling that good/bad you get sick of it yet when it goes away for years you miss it! I got out of radio for years but happened to get hold of 2 Cobra SSB mobiles for free in the 80's when I moved back to Arizona, as usual I modified them for extra room above 40 and one night I was working late on my car in the garage and threw an old mag-mount on the car and found a conversation on SSB around 27.455 USB there were about 6 guys just talking to each other and as I worked I just copied the mail. About 45 min later one of the guys said "well, I gotta go to bed, gonna go into Cheyenne in the morning!" So I picked up the mike and asked where they were at (I thought they were locals) They were great guys and said they were in Wyoming and couldn't believe I was talking barefoot INSIDE a garage in Mesa, AZ! They said the were Hams and would go to these frequencies to just have fun without all the legal stuff!
Probably the most fun I ever had talking skip, that is what sold me on sideband.
Sorry for the long post but it hopefully will give you a chance to see when's and why's and how unpredictable skip is.
A lot of people don't realize 11 meters was at one time a Ham radio band and police used it till they found out skip made it impractical (the old 108" whip was originally used on police cars) also, I think someone already mentioned skip goes in approx 11 year cycles, even though we are near the top, the skip just isn't like days gone past. The more sunspots, the more skip.
Check out this site, it will help: solarham(dot)net
73's