so i've been messing around on 10 meters the last few days and i honestly cant believe what ive been hearing. worked a couple stations in south america yesterday afternoon just running about 50 watts into my dipole, no amp, nothing fancy. the band just opened up out of nowhere around 2pm local and i was pulling in signals that sounded like they were next door.

ive been checking the solar flux on solarham and its been sitting up around 190 or so which i guess explains it but honestly i've never seen 10m this good since i got licensed a few years ago. is this just going to keep getting better as we head toward solar maximum or is this kind of a temporary spike thing? i know cycle 25 has been overperforming or whatever but i wasnt expecting it to feel this dramatic. anyway if you havent checked 28 mhz lately you really should, there was some kind of opening toward europe this morning too based on what i was seeing on the DX cluster

yeah cycle 25 has been something else, the predictions from the solar guys were pretty conservative and it just blew past all of them. SFI in the 180-190 range is genuinely good territory for 10m, you start seeing F2 propagation light up and it can stay open for hours if conditions hold. the europe opening you mentioned is probably real, ive been working into EA and G land pretty regularly on 10 lately in the mornings, roughly 1400-1600z seems to be the sweet spot from here in the midwest at least.

to your question about solar max, yeah in theory itshould keep getting better or at least stay active for another year or two before it starts tapering off. that said solar flux isnt linear, you get these periods where it spikes and then backs off for a week, so dont assume every day is going to be like this. just keep checking the indices and when you see SFI above 180 and the K index is low, like 1 or 2, just get on and call CQ. youll be surprised.

omg yes i noticed this too and i had no idea what was going on at first. i'm pretty new and i kept hearing all these stations speaking spanish and portuguese and i thought my radio was broken or something lol. ended up making my first ever DX contact into argentina which i know isnt that exotic but for me it was huge. 10m is now my favorite band honestly