For the last 45+ days there has been sporadic-E openings on 10 meters just about every day and often on 6 too. I like to squat on or near 28.4 Mhz USB and let my voice keyer call CQ on a "dead" band just to see what happens. Friday afternoon I worked a couple of Europeans, Saturday night 6 Stateside. I have found that posting my contacts on http://www.dxsummit.fi/#/ seems to help "wake up the band" too. https://www.dxmaps.com comes in handy sometimes too FYI- I'm using 100w and a dipole. My buddy Jim KB1AZ has worked a whole bunch of 6 + 10 meter DX with FT-8 lately, including Russia. My advice is to stop reading the "ham life sucks at solar minimum" threads, just get on and call CQ for 30 minutes to see what happens!
There are some real good openings on 10m/6m in the later spring & summer months. On 6 I just have 100w and a 3el M2 on the chimney. It's enough to play around with and have a lot of fun. So far 48 or 49 countries worked and 200+ grids worked with my setup. I've noticed it seems far more and more have gravitated to Ft8 now on 6m. I don't hear as much cw anymore.
Yep. I got 20 QSOs on 10m Saturday during IARU. Could have bene a lot more had people actually LISTENED to see if it was open instead of just adhering to the "low sunspot, dead band" mentality so many have adopted.
Same on 20. Middle of the night, nary a signal until you spin through the digital gutter and there's those spooky noises loud enough to hear on usb. Everything is more open than most think.
I have worked a lot of new grids on 6 meters this summer with a Par Omni-Angle 50 at 40 feet and 100 watts. Fun!
