Deepest part of the null was today for West Coast USA, but there was a consolation prize. I dialed back to 5 watts to try 3GØYA expedition to Rapa Nui on 10m SSB when the pile-up got smaller… first call, bingo.
Elliott, K6EL
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Hi,
It’s good to be optimistic but for now it remains quite complicated!
73’s
Chris F4WBN
I don’t think an Es season on 10m would do me much…being in the center of the EU. A QTH on the edge would be better.
Since I consciously avoid Digimodes, I can only earn my points through long activation times, actively calling stations and lots of new summits.
It would be nice if chasers would also listen over the ground wave whether it was working. A lot would certainly be possible. Unfortunately 10m is not that common.
73 Armin
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The DX is certainly there, well after dark last night I was listening to strong South American stations. However, conditions seemed down, with none of the NA activations audible on SSB - not that there is much of it, as commented before, NA amateurs have a stronger fixation on CW than over here!
I can sympathise with Armin, but when the Es is strong very short skip occurs, less than 500 km is not uncommon. We just have to stay alert to catch the fun as soon as it starts: I check the frequency of every 10m SSB activation, already I am hearing chasers that are well within the normal F2 skip distance but not, so far, the activations they are calling. I think when the Es really opens up, it will be quite sudden and startling - and so will be the QRM!
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Does anyone understand why we get these ‘lulls’?
Although the number of sunspots varies mainly with the ~11-year cycle, I understand, modulated on top of this cycle, are smaller variations in sunspot numbers (and the number of sunspot clusters) over much shorter periods, often from days to weeks, presumably with consequential variations in the solar wind strength, distortions of the magnetosphere and excitation of the ionosphere. Is this the explanation or something else?
(I’m ignoring effects due to short term (3-4 days) events like solar flares and coronal mass ejections)
Next time I’m contemplating my bad luck getting 10m contacts (e.g. this Friday afternoon) it would be nice to know why.
P.S. I once read a (RSGB) book on HF propagation. It was so complicated and long that I’ve forgotten almost all of it. I guess what I needed was an ‘executive summary’.
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I managed two 10M activations yesterday, hearing South Africa loud on SSB in the afternoon but had to resort to digital modes to get some traction.
The F2 skip was even longer than usual with Eastern Turkey/Israel/Lebanon showing up as well as some DX. Some EU pings suggesting a smidgeon of Es might be starting.
Rick
Far as I can figure out, there’s something at present going on with the sunspot distribution. There’s a fairly large part of the Sun pretty much without spots, and when it’s Earth-facing we get a rather low SFI. Then the other side has a whole bunch of spots, and they’ve been having flare parties of late, so when they’re facing us we get the downsides of too much solar activity. There’s not been much in-between time when the SFI’s high enough to help and not so high that it hinders…
I guess Ben Goodacre’s “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that” applies, too…
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That makes sense and seems to be consistent with this report which says there have been recently - and will be over coming days - lots of M class flares coming from five large sunspot clusters located in the sun’s south-west. [Not to be confused with Mr Spock’s frequent findings of M-class planetary atmospheres - handy for interacting with humanoid aliens wearing 1960s fashions]
Was it Pauli who told somebody “the universe is not only more complex than you think, its more complex than you CAN think”! (or something like that…) At the moment we are getting up to several M-class flares a day, along with innumerable C-class flares, and
the sunspot number today is 283. With the ionosphere being constantly jostled I doubt that conventional theory covers our situation - I’m just holding on for the ride! 
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OFF TOPIC
Sorry to be a Star Trek pedant Andy, yes Mudd’s women but not aliens - those were three normal women, [in the ‘miners’ episode] who took Mudd’s youth-enhancing pills rather than his robotic females. You probably meant these one’s …
On which - no doubt- the Austin Power’s fembots were based.
They look “alien” to me… no tattoos, no Botox, no fillers, no breast or butt augmentation, no fish pout, no dangerously underweight figures.
Oh no, that’s what a lot of women used to look like before modern trends and fashions. 
Artfully made up, though, no theatrical 5 and 9 for them - though I wonder if their eyes were chosen as a match for colour or are they wearing coloured contacts?
Or a bright light behind the camera that reflects off the retinas back into the lens rendering the eye-shine effect. Think it was done to make them look more glamorous.
Maybe conditions have improved [1515utc].
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Yes, I wasn’t expecting too much today from High Vinnals G/WB-012.
Propagation seemed to come and go. Tuning around could be very quiet, and then a few minutes later there were lots of signals, albeit not very strong.
Anyway, I finished with 18 in the log, all but two being on CW, the big surprise being Dougal VK4EKA who called me at 12:41 UTC after 5 minutes of calling CQ with no response - I was just thinking that’s probably it for now, but it turned out I was only half way through!
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A few signs of life on 10m today. I had a day on the local three Marilyns - Shining Tor G/SP-004, Gun G/SP-013 and The Cloud G/SP-015 - with Jimmy M0HGY as we had a coincidental day off.
I made 30 contacts across the three activations, with USA, Brazil, Argentina, Dominican Republic and Indonesia in the log. At one point a station from Honduras answered my CQ but frustratingly, vanished before we completed. That would have been an ATNO.
Jimmy used an inflatable 2m antenna we are testing for the first two summits. He found it a bit weighty, bulky and catching the wind mounted on the pole, and reverted to his beloved MFD for the third summit. He had, nonetheless, made lots of contacts though - 45. I now plan to try the aerial myself at a lower mounting height, and possibly a higher guying position on the mast.
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I spoke to Jimmy on Shining Tor and Gun, he was a good signal on both. However he was so quiet from The Cloud that I didn’t even try because I could hardly make him out. I can usually copy The Cloud well from my qth. Make of that what you will with regard to the antenna test!
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That’s really interesting information. Once I have decided upon the optimum mounting height and guying arrangements for the inflatable antenna, I intend to do a side-by-side comparison test between the inflatable and the MFD. I wouldn’t have thought there would be any discernible difference myself.
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K6VHF/HR9 by any chance Tom? He was active on 12m FT8 last night and worked at 18:36z.
73 Phil
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No, it was a resident station - HR1R.
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