so ive been sitting on 40m most evenings this week trying to work a few stateside contacts before bed and its just dead. like unusually dead. checked the solar data and nothing crazy going on, just k index sitting around 2 which should be fine. even tried calling CQ for a good 20 minutes last thursday and got nothing. maybe everyones on FT8 now and i just dont know it lol. used to be you could always find someone ragchewing down around 7.250 or so but lately its just noise. wondering if im missing something or if others are seeing the same thing

yeah honestly 40 has felt off to me too lately but i chalked it up to my antenna situation since i just redid the feedline and wasnt sure if i made things worse. good to know its not just me maybe. i did catch a pretty decent opening last saturday morning around 0800 local and worked a few guys down in florida no problem so its not totally dead i guess just hit or miss

FT8. thats where everybody went. pull up WSJT-X and tune to 7.074 and youll see like 50 signals stacked up. kind of bittersweet honestly, i get it because it works great for weak signal stuff but the bands feel empty now if youre not running digital modes. i still fire up the mic on weekends though, some of us are still out there