so i was just casually scanning around 28.400 yesterday afternoon and the band was just completely alive, like i havent heard it this good in years honestly. i worked a ZL3, couple of JAs, and even snagged a VU2 all within like an hour and a half on just 100 watts and my crappy dipole thats probably not even resonant where i think it is. solar flux index was sitting up around 190-something when i checked spaceweather.com and the K index was nice and low, 1 or 2 i think.

im still pretty new to chasing DX seriously and im trying to understand this better — like is this just a temporary thing because we're climbing toward solar max or is 10m going to stay open like this for a while? and how do you guys predict when its going to be good? do you just check the flux every morning or is there some other way you're figuring out when to get on and point at europe or the pacific?

also does anyone use those online band condition sites or is it mostly just getting on and listening to see whats there

yeah 10m has been really something lately, we're definitely riding the upswing toward solar cycle 25 maximum and the predictions have been pushing that out to sometime in the next year or two depending on who you ask. the flux being up in the 180-200 range is legitimately exciting for those of us who remember the dead years when it was sitting at like 65 and 10m was a ghost town for months at a stretch.

for figuring out when to get on, i mostly use a combination of things — DXmaps.com is really good for seeing real time spots and you can watch the propagation paths light up almost in real time, and i also keep an eye on the DX cluster obviously. but honestly the best trick i ever learned from an old timer at our club was just to leave a radio on 28.300 or so with the squelch cracked while im doing other stuff around the shack. when you start hearing signals pop up you know the band is opening and you can actually sit down and work it. checking the solar flux every morning is worthwhile too just to set expectations for the day — anything above 150 and you start getting excited, above 180 and you should probably cancel your plans.

that VU2 on a dipole and 100 watts is a solid catch by the way, india isnt always easy from north america even when 10m is good

im kind of in the same boat as you, been licensed about 18 months and just started really paying attention to propagation stuff this year. what helped me a lot was finding the VOACAP online tool, you can put in your location and where you want to work and it'll show you a prediction of which bands are likely to be open and when. its not perfect obviously but it really helped me understand why sometimes i can work europe on 15m in the morning and then later in the afternoon 17m is better and stuff like that.

also pskreporter is really cool if you do any digital modes because you can actually see where your signal is being heard in real time, like you can transmit on FT8 and watch dots appear on the map showing you exactly where you're getting out. kind of addicting actually