so i was just spinning around 28mhz last tuesday afternoon, not really expecting much, and suddenly the band just... opened up. like completely. i was hearing stations from south america, europe, even caught what sounded like a JA station calling CQ for a bit before he faded out. im running maybe 100w into a wire dipole up about 25 feet which isnt exactly a killer setup and i was still making contacts left and right.

ive been licensed since 2019 so i kind of missed the bottom of the last solar cycle and never really got to experience good 10m propagation before. is this what its always like when the flux is up? i checked pskreporter and the map was just lit up. solar flux index was sitting around 180 or so that day i think. curious how much higher it can actually get and whether we're near the peak yet or still climbing.

oh man yeah 10m has been something else this cycle. i remember back in cycle 23 and 24 when the flux would occasionally spike into the 200s and the band would be open basically coast to coast to europe from the moment the sun came up. what youre seeing now is pretty much the real deal — when the sfi gets up above 150-160 consistently that band comes alive in a way that nothing else really matches. the short skip disappears and suddenly youre working dx with a rubber duck almost, not really but you know what i mean.

as for whether we're at the peak, NOAA has been revising their solar max predictions upward for the last year or so. some people are saying we might already be past it, others think theres still another year of good conditions. honestly nobody really knows for sure, the sun does what it wants. just get on and work it while its good because 10m at the bottom of the cycle is basically a nice empty parking lot with nobody home.

yeah same here, i caught a really long opening into europe last weekend on 10 ssb, worked like 8 or 9 countries in an hour which for me is kind of unheard of. i was honestly just gonna check the band real quick and ended up staying on for two hours lol. my neighbor who got me into the hobby keeps telling me to watch the DX cluster more which i keep forgetting to do but when i finally pulled it up that day there were spots everywhere. if you arent using pskreporter or the dxcluster when the band opens youre missing half the fun honestly