so i was just messing around on 10 meters yesterday afternoon, not really expecting much, and all of a sudden i started hearing stations coming in from brazil, argentina, a couple from south africa i think. just absolutely blasting in, like they were next door. ive had my technician for about 8 months now and honestly i had kind of written off HF because every time i tuned around it seemed dead but this was something else entirely.

i checked pskreporter after and saw my ft8 signal was being heard all over the place. someone in japan even decoded me which felt unreal. is this normal for this time of year or did something happen with the sun? i saw some people talking about solar flux being up but i dont really understand how that all works yet. like what number should i be looking for to know when to bother checking 10m?

welcome to the addiction haha. yeah 10m has been fantastic lately, solar flux has been sitting up around 180-200 which is really solid. basically the higher the flux index the more the ionosphere gets charged up and the better HF propagation gets, especially on the higher bands like 10 and 12 meters. you want to keep an eye on the SFI (that's solar flux index) and also the K index, which you want LOW. K index 0 or 1 is ideal, if it jumps up to 4 or 5 there's usually a geomagnetic storm messing things up and the bands go to garbage even if the flux is high.

sites like DXmaps and the DX cluster will show you in real time what's being heard where. also prop.kc2g.com has a nice realtime map. honestly just bookmark those and check them before you sit down to operate and you'll get a feel for it pretty quick. the cycle 25 peak is coming up so enjoy it while it lasts, this is probably going to be the best propagation we see for another decade or so.

yeah i noticed too, worked a ZL station on sunday which was only my second ever contact outside north america so i was pretty stoked about that. im running just a dipole in the attic so if i can do it anyone can probably. i still get confused about the difference between flux and the A index and K index, theres like so many numbers to track. anyway yeah 10m is the move right now, keep checking it