so ive been trying to work some DX on 20m and 17m the past few days and its been all over the place. monday evening i had europe coming in like gangbusters, was working stations in spain and germany no problem running like 100w into my dipole, and then tuesday nothing. literally nothing. called CQ for like 45 minutes and got one reply from a station in ohio which like, great, but thats not exactly dx lol

i checked the solar flux index and it was sitting around 145 or so which i thought was decent, but the K index had been elevated, like 4 or 5 at some points, so maybe thats the issue? im still pretty new to understanding all the propagation stuff and i feel like i get the basic idea — solar activity good, geomagnetic storms bad — but i dont really have a feel for when things are gonna be good vs when to just not even bother

anybody have a good way to kind of predict when a dx opening is gonna happen, or is it really just a matter of checking the indices and hoping for the best? also curious if anyone has a favorite tool or website they use to track this stuff because im currently just using the DX cluster and refreshing pskreporter every 20 minutes like a crazy person

yeah the K index being up will absolutely kill 20m, especially for transatlantic paths. when its 4 or above youre basically fighting against it. the flux at 145 is actually pretty solid right now — few months ago we were seeing it in the 90s and that was rough — so when the geo settles down again you should have some decent openings.

for tools i mostly use prop.kc2g.com for a real-time view of whats actually being heard where, and I cross-reference with the NOAA SWPC site for the actual indices. pskreporter is good too but i find it can be a bit noisy. the DX cluster is still my go-to when im actually trying to work someone specific though.

one thing that helped me when i was learning this stuff was to just keep a log not just of contacts but of the conditions each time i operated. after a few months you start to get a feel for it, like oh its late afternoon and the flux is above 130 and K is low, europe should be there. takes time but it clicks eventually

the flux and K index thing took me forever to really get too. i kept thinking higher solar flux = good all the time and would get confused when things were still crummy. turns out when a coronal mass ejection hits even decent flux numbers dont save you, the whole ionosphere just goes wobbly.

17m has been my go-to lately when 20 gets flaky, sometimes when 20 sounds dead 17 still has something going on, worth a shot if you havent tried switching around