so i was just spinning the dial on 10 meters last night around 8pm local time and i kept hearing stations from Brazil, Argentina, a few from southern europe too. been a ham for about 6 years now and i dont think ive ever heard 10m this open in the evening like that, usually by the time dinner is over the band is dead as a doornail.

checked the solar flux this morning and it was sitting around 210 which is pretty high, and the K index was nice and low like a 1 or 2. i know we're heading toward solar maximum but i keep forgetting how much difference it actually makes when the numbers line up like that. managed to work a PY station and a CE with just my 100w and a dipole, nothing fancy at all.

anybody else been seeing good DX openings on 10 or 12m recently? curious if this is a consistent thing right now or if i just got lucky with the timing. also not sure if i should be watching any particular websites for predicting when conditions will be good, i've been using DXmaps but wondering if theres something better for planning ahead.

yeah 10m has been stupid good lately. i worked like 14 countries in a single afternoon a couple weeks ago just messing around, wasnt even trying to run a pileup or anything. the solar flux being up over 200 makes such a huge difference it's almost unfair compared to the low years when 10m felt completely useless.

for tracking conditions i'd suggest keeping an eye on the WWV broadcasts on 2.5, 5, 10, or 15 MHz, they give you the solar flux and A/K index numbers every hour. also N0NBH's propagation page is pretty good for a quick visual snapshot. DXmaps is solid for seeing whats actually open right now in real time, which is sometimes more useful than trying to predict it. honestly for evening openings like what you're describing, a lot of that is F2 propagation doing weird stuff near the solar max, it doesnt always follow the textbook rules which is part of what makes it fun to chase.

I'm pretty new to HF, only got my general a few months ago, and I have a question kind of related to this — when you say the K index was low, does lower always mean better for DX? I've seen people talk about that but I thought higher energy from the sun would help signals travel farther. Trying to wrap my head around all of this propagation stuff, it's a bit overwhelming at first.