so ive been noticing for the past few weeks that 20m has been really hit or miss, like some days ill work a dozen europeans in the morning no problem and then the next day i cant even hear the beacon on 14.100 which is usually rock solid for me. checked the solar flux and its been bouncing around between like 140 and 180 which i thought would be pretty decent but something feels off.

also been trying to catch some DX on 17m and 15m which i heard should be opening up more now that were supposedly heading toward solar max but honestly 15m has felt pretty dead most afternoons. did get a brief opening to JA land yesterday around 0200z which was awesome, worked 4 stations in like 20 minutes and then it just slammed shut. that kind of thing normal this time of year or am i missing something about reading the indices better

been licensed about 3 years, running 100w to a dipole up about 30 feet if that matters. just trying to figure out if its worth staying up late to chase openings or if the bands are just genuinely being weird

yeah its not just you, the bands have been doing this all month. the solar flux numbers look good on paper but the K index has been spiking a lot which basically wipes out the higher HF bands even when the SFI is healthy. i always check both — a flux of 160 means nothing if the K index is sitting at 4 or 5 because the geomagnetic disturbance just eats your F layer propagation alive especially on paths over the poles.

the JA opening you caught sounds about right, that transpolar path to Japan can be really productive when conditions settle down after a disturbance, theres sometimes this sweet spot a day or two after a geomagnetic storm where the flux is still high and things calm down. i use the DX cluster and dxmaps.com to see where activity is popping up in real time, that helps a lot for knowing when to actually sit down at the radio instead of just hoping. your setup should be fine for working DX when the bands cooperate, a dipole at 30 feet isnt ideal but people work all over the world with worse

honestly the 15m thing has been frustrating me too and i have a beam so its not a power or antenna issue on my end. i think were just in one of those weird phases even near solar max where you get these random quiet stretches. i did hear someone on a club net say that some of the recent solar activity has been producing proton events which can mess up polar paths specifically, might explain some of the inconsistency. anyway the JA openings on 17m late evening have been my best bet lately, worth trying if you havent already