so ive been noticing 10m and 12m have been all over the place this past few weeks. some days ill get into europe no problem from here in the midwest, other days i cant even hear a peep and its just noise. been checking the solar flux index on spaceweather.com and it seems like its been jumping around a lot, went from like 145 down to around 120 and back up again in the span of maybe 10 days. not sure if thats normal for this part of the cycle or what.

also had a weird morning last thursday where 17m just completely died on me mid-qso, guy in japan and i were having a solid contact and then poof, gone. k-index had spiked up to 4 or something and i didnt even notice until after. is that kind of thing pretty common during geomagnetic disturbances? im still figuring out how to read all the space weather stuff and when to actually bother getting on vs just waiting it out.

on the flip side i caught a pretty decent opening on 10m two days ago, worked a handful of stations in south america and even one in ZL land which i wasnt expecting at all. so the bands arent totally dead just unpredictable i guess. anyone else seeing similar stuff?

yeah totally normal for where we are in the cycle right now. solar cycle 25 has actually been performing better than the predictions said it would which is why you're getting those surprise openings on the higher bands. the flux bouncing around like that is pretty typical, individual active regions rotate across the solar disk and then disappear around the limb and flux drops, then a new region shows up and it climbs again. nothing to worry about.

the japan qso dying mid-contact from a k-index jump, yeah ive had that happen more times than i can count. polar path to JA from the midwest is going to be the first thing to get hammered when there's geomagnetic activity. if k is at 3 or above i usually focus on more equatorial paths, south america, caribbean, west africa, those tend to hold up a lot better. 17m is usually my go-to when conditions are iffy because it kind of threads the needle between the reliability of 20m and the excitement of the higher bands.

for space weather stuff i really like the wwv propagation bulletins, they come out at 18 minutes past every hour and give you a quick rundown. DXmaps.com is also great for seeing actual reported openings in real time so you know if a band is actually doing something before you even key up.

that ZL contact on 10m is awesome, new zealand from the midwest is not a short hop at all. i've only worked ZL a couple times and both were during really good openings. what time of day was that if you dont mind me asking? im trying to get a feel for when to actually be at the radio for the good stuff on 10.

i'm pretty new to all the propagation prediction stuff myself so i dont have much advice but i downloaded an app called HamSphere or actually i think the one i use for predictions is called VOACAP, someone on here recommended it a while back. havent totally figured it out yet but it looks like it can tell you the best times and bands for a given path which would have been useful for me last weekend when i completely missed what sounded like a big 15m opening to africa.