so ive been watching the solar flux index pretty closely the past few weeks and its been all over the place. we had a few days up around 180 which honestly i havent seen in a while and 10m was just absolutely nuts, i worked a bunch of stuff in europe and even caught a few JA stations which i wasnt expecting at all. then like two days later the flux dropped back down and there was a K index spike from some geomagnetic activity and it felt like everything just died.

i guess my question is how closely do you guys actually watch this stuff in real time? i use the DXmaps site and check propagation.hepburn.es but im wondering if theres better tools people are using. also curious if anyone has a feel for how long after a flux jump you usually start seeing the bands actually respond — like is it pretty immediate or does it lag a bit?

yeah 10m has been giving me surprises too, caught ZS6 off the back of my yagi last Tuesday which was completely unexpected. the flux-to-actual-propagation lag is real and from what ive read and experienced its usually somewhere between 24-48 hours before you see the ionosphere really respond to a big SFI jump. the geomagnetic storm thing though is almost immediate in terms of killing the higher bands, especially anything above 20m, though sometimes 40 and 80 actually improve during moderate disturbances which is weird but it happens.

for tools i really like watching the DX cluster combined with the WWV broadcasts. if you catch the 18 minute mark on any hour WWW actually gives you the solar flux, A index, and K index reading. old school but honestly still useful. pskreporter is also great for seeing where propagation actually is in real time based on what people are decoding on FT8.

this is actually something im trying to learn more about myself, im still pretty new and all the solar flux stuff is a bit confusing honestly. like i understand higher number generally means better HF conditions but i dont really get the relationship between SFI and specific bands. does a flux of 150 help 15m more than 40m or is it across the board? sorry if thats a dumb question