Diana Patel

the bed rail mount things are hit or miss in my experience. i tried one of the clamp-on styles a few years back on a silverado and the vibration was just awful, loosened up constantly and i eventually gave up on it. what actually worked for me was drilling a proper NMO hole in the cab roof, did it myself with a stepped bit and one of those cheap NMO hole saw kits from amazon. yeah its a permanent hole but honestly the performance improvement was worth it and you route the coax down through the headliner and out the firewall, its pretty clean once you do it.
for the SWR issue on 70cm with a lip mount, a lot of that is just the ground plane geometry being weird. not much you can do short of moving the antenna to a better spot on the vehicle.

yeah you're definitely not imagining it, 10m has been genuinely wild this cycle. i worked JA on 10m SSB last month running like 50 watts into a vertical and it wasnt even that hard to get through the pileup. for context i've been licensed since 2004 and i went through the last couple solar minimums where 10m was basically a 2 meter band without the repeaters, so this feels really good right now.
the flux hitting the 180s and above is pretty significant, anything over 150 and 10m usually has something going on especially in the mornings when the F2 propagation is cooking. keep an eye on PSK Reporter too if you do any digital modes, you can actually watch the band open up in real time which is kind of addictive honestly. the path geometry to South America from North America on 10m is almost like a freeway when conditions are right, low takeoff angle and the band just carries signal forever.
as for the peak prediction, yeah its all over the place depending on who you ask. NOAA has revised their numbers upward a couple times already which is a good sign. might as well enjoy it while it lasts because the downslope is usually slower but you never know exactly when it starts feeling sluggish again.

Sporadic-E season typically kicks off in late spring and continues through summer, with early season starting in late May and June. I'm seeing some brief 6m activity that looks like early Es - anyone else noticing unusual propagation on the magic band?
Sporadic E is common from spring through summer, and even with very low power, global contacts are possible. Working Es with only a few watts and simple antennas is possible - most VHF DXers get their start with Es openings on 6 meters.

yeah same thing happened to me a few months back. i think i said my callsign backwards or something. the net control was super nice about it though and just moved on. i think most people running nets have seen everything at this point and a nervous new ham stumbling through a check-in is like the least of their concerns. just keep showing up, it gets easier really fast