so ive been watching the solar flux index creep up over the past few weeks and yesterday afternoon i finally started hearing stuff on 10m that wasnt just noise. worked a couple stations in South America and even had a brief opening into Europe around 1400 local which honestly surprised me because we havent seen much of that around here lately.

been using pskreporter to watch the spots come in and its pretty clear somethings changing. the SFI was sitting around 180-something yesterday which i know isnt crazy high but compared to what weve had it feels like a different band. K index was low too which always helps.

curious if anyone else has been taking advantage of this or if its just been good in my part of the country. im in the midwest for reference. also wondering if 12m is worth monitoring more — i kind of ignore it but maybe i shouldnt be.

yeah 10m has definitely been showing some life lately. I worked into Japan last Thursday on 10m SSB which I haven't done in a couple years, just stumbled across an opening while scanning around. the gray line stuff in the morning has been pretty good too if you catch it right.

12m is absolutely worth watching, honestly it's kind of an underrated band during rising solar conditions. it tends to stay open a bit longer into the evening than 10m does and the noise floor is usually pretty decent. i'd suggest just leaving a radio parked there while you're doing other things and see what pops up. DXmaps and the cluster will tell you pretty fast when something interesting is happening.

with the cycle where it is right now i'd expect more of this through the next year or two so good time to have a decent antenna up for the high bands if you don't already.

I'm pretty new to HF, only got my general like 4 months ago, and honestly all the solar flux stuff still kind of confuses me. like I get that higher is better but I dont really understand what the K index does to propagation — someone at my club mentioned it but the explanation went over my head a bit. is there a good resource for learning this stuff or does it just come with time on the air?