so i was at work when apparently 10 meters just went absolutely wild last tuesday, saw a bunch of spots on the DX cluster when i got home and i was pretty gutted. looked like there were stations from south america and even some EU coming through pretty strong according to the spots. typical right, the one time i actually have a decent antenna pointed that direction and im stuck in a meeting about quarterly reports or whatever.

anyway has anyone been keeping an eye on the solar flux lately? it's been bouncing around in the 150s which is decent but nothing crazy. i know we're climbing toward solar max and supposedly 2025 is going to be really something but i feel like ive been hearing that for two years now. also curious if anyone has tried the new Icom IC-905 in any real world situations yet, keep seeing posts about it but nothing from people i actually trust

yeah i caught about 45 minutes of that opening before dinner and it was pretty wild, worked 6 stations in Argentina and one guy in Chile who was running barefoot into a dipole, signal was like he was next door. you really did miss a good one. the flux was sitting at like 158 that morning which i guess helped.

on the IC-905 thing, my buddy up in Vermont got one a few months back and says the 10ghz side of it is really impressive if you have the module for it, but he's had some software quirks with the firmware, nothing deal breaking just annoying. probably worth waiting for another revision if you're not in a hurry. the price tag is also... yeah.

im pretty new so i dont really know what a good opening looks like yet tbh, i just got my technician last month and im still figuring out what all the numbers mean on pskreporter and stuff. but this thread is making me want to actually pay attention to the solar flux more. is there like a good site to check that that isnt super overwhelming? the NOAA one kind of makes my eyes glaze over