so i was just messing around on 10m last weekend, not really expecting much, had it on in the background while i was doing stuff around the shack and all of a sudden the band just opened up like crazy. i mean i was hearing stations from south america, europe, a couple japanese stations coming through pretty solid. this is on a mediocre vertical i threw up last fall that i honestly wasnt sure was even tuned right.

ive been licensed since 2019 and i feel like ive never really experienced a proper solar cycle peak before, at least not like this. is this what people mean when they say the cycle 25 predictions are tracking ahead of schedule? i read something about that on the ARRL site but i wasnt sure if i was reading it right. feels like every time i fire up the radio on 10 or 12m lately something is happening. just wanted to see if others are noticing the same thing or if i just happened to catch a lucky weekend

yeah cycle 25 has been something else, most of the predictions had us peaking around 2025 or so but the smoothed sunspot numbers have been running way ahead of what NOAA forecast. i was licensed back in the late 90s during cycle 23 and honestly this is starting to feel similar. 10m was basically a free DX machine back then, you could work europe with 5 watts and a wet noodle antenna if conditions were right.

the thing people dont always realize is that even within a good cycle the day to day variation is huge. keep an eye on the solar flux index, anything above like 150 and 10m is usually worth a listen. spaceweather.com and DXMaps are both worth bookmarking if you havent already. enjoy it while it lasts because the low part of the cycle is genuinely depressing, you start to forget 10m can even do anything useful

omg yes i noticed this too last tuesday i think it was. im pretty new only got my general in march and i was just scanning around and heard this pile up and had no idea what was going on at first lol. ended up getting my first ever europe contact on 28.450 or somewhere around there, the signal was so strong i thought it was a local at first. definitely gonna be spending more time up there now