so ive been noticing 20m has been kind of all over the place the last few weeks and im not sure if its actually the solar flux doing something weird or if theres something going on with my antenna that im missing. like some days i can hear europe clear as a bell in the morning and then the next day same time same everything and its just noise. checked my SWR and everything looks fine on that end.

looked at the solar flux numbers on spaceweather.com and they were sitting around 145 or so which i thought was supposed to be decent? but then we had that geomagnetic storm a few days back and yeah that kind of explained the one really bad day but the inconsistency before that is what im puzzled about. anybody else seeing this on 20 or is it a regional thing. im in the midwest if that matters.

also been hearing some wild stuff on 10m in the afternoons which i didnt expect at all given where we are in the solar cycle. thought maybe Es but it seemed more consistent than that for a few days running.

yeah 20m has definitely been doing that thing where it just refuses to cooperate and then randomly opens up like crazy. the geomag storm you mentioned knocked things around for a lot of folks, takes a day or two sometimes for the ionosphere to settle back down after the K index spikes. i usually give it 24-48 hours after a big disturbance before i expect anything reliable on the higher HF bands.

the 10m stuff though, that sounds like it could genuinely be F2 propagation. we're climbing toward solar max and flux in the 140s is actually pretty solid for that. i had a couple of contacts into south america on 10m last week that surprised me too, like actual solid signals not just barely readable. worth keeping an eye on DXmaps or maybe the DX cluster to see what paths are opening up. if other people in your region are making contacts at the same time youre hearing stuff, its probably real F2 and not just local noise or Es.

omg yes i thought i was going crazy with 20m. im still pretty new to HF and i kept thinking i did something wrong with my setup because one morning i worked like six stations in europe easy and then the very next day nothing. didnt realize solar activity could change things that fast honestly. still learning all this propagation stuff, its kind of fascinating but also frustrating when you just want to make contacts lol. does anyone have like a good beginner resource for understanding when to expect what band to be open? i've been using pskreporter to see whats getting out but im not totally sure how to use that info to predict anything