so i've been messing around on 10 meters pretty much every evening after work this week and i dont even know what to say. worked Japan twice, a couple stations in South Africa, and then last night i had a solid 20 minute QSO with a guy in Brazil all on 100 watts and a crappy dipole that's probably not even cut right for the band. like i put it up a couple years ago and kind of forgot about it.

i check pskreporter and the spots are just everywhere. flux index was sitting around 180-190 all week which i guess explains a lot of it but honestly i havent seen 10m behave like this since i got my license back in 2018 and conditions were already starting to go downhill then. solar cycle 25 is really delivering huh.

anyway just curious if others are taking advantage of this or if im the only one who keeps getting surprised when 10m is actually open. also for the newer folks on here -- if you have any kind of antenna that even works on 10 you should really be checking it right now. the band doesnt always look like this.

yeah 10m has been nuts, i worked something like 30 countries last weekend just casually calling CQ for a few hours. wasnt even trying to run a serious session. the SFI being that high combined with a relatively quiet geomagnetic field makes for some pretty ideal conditions. keep an eye on the K index too -- when it spikes above 4 or so things can fall apart pretty fast even when the flux looks great. but yeah when both line up like they have been this week its just... its good. real good.

also the Brazil path on 10 in the evenings is almost always open when conditions are decent, thats kind of a reliable one. the Japan path mid-morning local time is the one that always gets me excited when it shows up.

oh wow okay i didnt realize that was why. i heard some signals on 28mhz the other day that were super loud and i just assumed maybe someone nearby was running a lot of power or something. im still figuring out how all the propagation stuff works to be honest. whats a good resource for checking the solar flux and that kind of thing before i get on the air? like is there a website people actually use for that or do you just kind of learn to feel it out over time