so i was just sitting down with coffee around 9am local and figured id spin the dial on 10 meters just to check, not really expecting anything since its been pretty dead here for the past few weeks. and out of nowhere im hearing stations from south america coming in like they're next door, like genuinely S9 signals from argentina and brazil. worked about a dozen contacts in maybe 40 minutes before it started fading. even heard a couple european stations briefly which i havent done on 10m in a while.

anyone else catch this? im up in the northeast so im curious if it was a more regional thing or if guys further west were seeing it too. solar flux has been creeping up lately and i saw somewhere that we might be getting close to cycle 25 peak sooner than originally predicted but i dont really follow the propagation stuff that closely. anyway just wanted to share because it made my whole morning honestly

yeah i caught the tail end of that, was monitoring on the SDR while at work and saw the waterfall just light up around 28.4 and 28.5. didnt get a chance to actually sit down and work anything which is frustrating but the signals were definitely there. the cycle 25 thing is real, NOAA updated their smoothed sunspot number projections a couple months back and it's been trending higher than the original consensus estimate. we could be looking at peak conditions sometime in the next 12 to 18 months which is going to be great for 10 and even 6 meters. if you havent already set up some kind of alert for solar flux index going above like 150 or 160 i'd recommend it, thats usually when 10 starts doing really interesting things

ugh i missed it, i keep meaning to just leave the radio on more but life gets in the way. i only got my general last spring so ive never actually experienced a real 10m opening like people talk about. been on 40 and 20 mostly. one of these days