so ive been on 17m and 20m pretty much every evening this week and something is definitely off. like monday night i had solid signals from europe all the way into 0200z and then tuesday it was dead by like 2200z. i check the solar flux on solarham and its been bouncing around, saw it up around 178 the other day then dropped back down. i honestly dont fully understand the relationship between the flux index and actual band conditions in real time, like i know higher is generally better for the higher bands but theres obviously more going on. the K index has been spiking too which i assume is the culprit for some of the dropouts. anyway just curious if anyone else has been watching this or if theres a good resource to actually understand what im looking at when i check the indices because right now im kind of guessing

yeah 20m has been all over the place, you're not imagining it. there was a decent sized filament eruption a few days back and the geomagnetic storm that followed knocked things around pretty good. K index hit 4 or 5 at some point which is enough to mess up the higher latitude paths especially anything going over the pole. europe to the US west coast was basically toast for a day or so.

for understanding the numbers - solar flux is kind of a proxy for ionizing radiation hitting the ionosphere, higher flux means more ionization which means better support for higher frequency bands like 10, 12, 15. but thats a slow moving thing. the K and A indices are what tell you about the current geomagnetic situation and those can tank conditions fast even when flux looks great. DXMaps is worth bookmarking if you havent already, you can actually see spots in real time and get a feel for whats open

im pretty new to HF and honestly the propagation stuff is still kind of magic to me lol. but i did notice 15m opened up yesterday afternoon out of nowhere and i worked a station in Brazil which was my first ever south america contact so whatever the bands were doing i'll take it. my elmer keeps telling me to just get on and listen rather than staring at the indices, said something like the band will tell you more than the numbers will. probably true but i still check solarham every morning out of habit