so ive been noticing 20m has been doing some strange things the past couple weeks. some days its absolutely dead in the afternoon when it usually opens up nicely to europe from here in the midwest, then other days its just wall to wall signals and i'm working stations i normally cant touch. checked the solar flux and it was sitting around 145-150 which honestly isnt bad at all, but the K index keeps jumping around and i think thats messing things up more than anything.

had a really nice opening to japan on 15m last tuesday out of nowhere, like i wasnt even expecting it and just happened to be tuned up and heard JA stations coming in strong, worked 4 of them in about 20 minutes then it just kind of faded. is this normal for where we are in the solar cycle? feels like conditions are getting better overall but really inconsistent. anyone else seeing this kind of thing or is something wrong with my setup that im not accounting for

yeah totally normal for this part of the cycle honestly. we're climbing toward solar max and the flux has been trending up but geomagnetic activity has been really unsettled too, those two things kind of fight each other. high flux is great for propagation but then a CME comes through and the K index spikes and it wipes out everything especially on the higher bands. 15m to japan from midwest is very doable right now when conditions cooperate, that path is usually best in your early morning hours like around 1200-1400 UTC depending on time of year. the inconsistency you're describing sounds completely normal to me, i've been logging similar stuff from here in ohio. just keep an eye on the geomagnetic forecasts, spaceweather.com updates pretty regularly and DXmaps is good for seeing where openings are actually happening in real time.

that JA opening sounds awesome, ive been trying to work japan for months and keep missing it. what time of day was that roughly and what were you running power wise? im only on 100w and a wire antenna so wondering if i even have a shot or if i need to upgrade stuff first. also whats a good solar flux number to look for before bothering to try 15m