so i was just spinning the dial on my 857d last night kind of half paying attention while making dinner and i started hearing stations coming in from all over the place on 10 meters. worked a guy in brazil without even trying, just threw out a call and he came right back. signal was like 59 plus, almost blew my headphones off honestly.

ive been licensed since 2019 and i dont think ive ever really experienced a proper solar cycle peak before, like i knew it was coming but actually sitting there and hearing it is something else. for you newer hams who maybe got licensed during the doldrums when 10m felt like a dead band — this is what people were talking about when they said wait for the cycle to come back around.

also noticed the FT8 spots on pskreporter were just absolutely packed, like the whole band lit up from late afternoon into the evening. curious if anyone else has been spending more time up there or if theres specific times that have been working better for you. i usually work ssb but might have to dust off the digital modes more if its going to be like this for a while.

yeah 10m has been something else this fall, i worked like 23 countries in one afternoon just doing casual s&p in a contest, wasnt even trying to run a frequency or anything serious. my antenna up there is just a dipole i threw up a few years ago when the band was dead and i figured why bother with anything fancy — kind of regretting that now haha. been meaning to put up a yagi for a while and this is basically the universe telling me to stop procrastinating.

the solar flux has been hovering up pretty high and the K index has been behaving itself more than usual so conditions lined up nicely. enjoy it while it lasts, these openings wont stick around forever and we're probably somewhere near the peak or just past it depending on whos forecast you believe.

omg yes i just got my technician last month and everyone kept telling me to try 10m but every time i listened there was nothing there and i thought maybe my radio was broken lol. then two days ago i turned it on and it was like a totally different band. heard a station from spain just clear as a bell. i dont have HF privileges yet for voice but i did manage to make a FT8 contact into europe which i could not believe. my first ever DX contact ever. pretty exciting for someone just starting out.