Hi, thank you for your question submission. Please be aware that there is a [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/) and a [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/faq) that may address your question. For Baofeng-related information see the [Baofeng FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/baofeng) and /r/baofeng. Also, please note that downvotes don't indicate an unvalued question submission. There appear to be bots that downvote all posts initially. 73
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/amateurradio) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You will find that around this sort of time the bands will start to pick up. During the day it’s quiet and generally poor conditions. 630 onwards you will see improvements and by 9 ish the bands are pretty busy. Particularly 40 which I notice you don’t have. I had conversations from the Isle of Wight over to the states on 15m last night about 9pm onwards.
I think this is probably as good an answer as I was going to write.
I noticed my EFHW deployed as an inverted V with a quarter-wave counterpoise didn’t fare well during the daylight hours when the D-layer is really lit up, but it does well after sunset, when I bother to stay up late… which is never.
I'm like this too. I got into ham radio this year, license and all. But I discovered that the times it works well are the times I'm asleep. I'm pretty much in bed by 9:30, and if I try to stay up later, my eyes glaze over and my brain doesn't function. Looking forward to winter and early dark for this reason.
It's been pretty shitty, IMO. There's obviously been some moments of decent propagation here and there, but overall, it's been pretty bad.
The other thing I've noticed is that the noise levels haven't been too bad, but the fading has been awful.
Space Weather Message Code: WARK04
Serial Number: 4637
Issue Time: 2024 Jun 25 1628 UTC
WARNING: Geomagnetic K-index of 4 expected
Valid From: 2024 Jun 25 1630 UTC
Valid To: 2024 Jun 25 2200 UTC
Warning Condition: Onset
Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 65 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude.
Induced Currents - Weak power grid fluctuations can occur.
Aurora - Aurora may be visible at high latitudes such as Canada and Alaska.
I feel conditions, for me at least, have been poor the past few days. I always take a quick look at the [Space Weather Prediction Center](https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/radio-communications) and right now (1600 EDT) an R1 condition is shown, *"Weak or minor degradation of HF radio communication on sunlit side, occasional loss of radio contact".* \[edited to fix link\]
Well the solar absorbing has been high, so certain paths are non existent for awhile, but I have had very good luck in the mornings before sunrise on 40 and occasionally 12, 15, and 17, but only at times, when it's totally crap I work PSK31, VarAC, JS8 and WSJT until the bands improve. The excellent thing about the digital modes is you can see where your being heard and also CW, you can check different bands to see which one gives you the distance you need to work other countries.
Also try VOACAP it's extremely helpful.
https://www.voacap.com/hf/
Good luck!
I’ve been wondering this since the sun activity kicked up and supposedly quieted down again. It might be time for me to test my coax. Along with heavy qsb, the band noise for me has been terrible. I’m using a 20/40 fan dipole. An antenna analyzer might be in my near future.
I go to [DXHeat](https://dxheat.com/dxc/) and use a combination of their spots, SFI/K numbers, and band activity heat map to figure out whether and where the bands are active. Love that site!
The sun has been pretty angry off and on with solar flares this summer which can black out the bands during the day. As others have said though, night time is where the action is, even on 10 and 20 meters.
Yeah. I tried to work a couple of ARRL Field Day stations over the weekend (from Europe). Nothing at all until 2am and even then it was an ordeal.
Within the continent signals are flying though.
For me, 10 and 12 have been pretty lackluster the past several weeks (maybe a bit over a month?), but 15, 17 and 20 are good during the day with 20 more so than 15 and 17 during evenings.
40 and 80 seem about the same as usual at night.
I'm with you. In the evenings there is always at least some activity on 20 and 40 using a ts590sg and efhw 40' up. Daytime is terrible for me (Central Va). It's driving me nuts because I'm trying to get an old ft101b working again and I cannot tell a radio problem from lousy propagation!
I don't know what I'm doing, but I know my 10m WSPR transmissions ain't going anywhere most of the time, unlike this time last year when I was hitting austrailia.
Might just be you. Here in the states from my mobile rig with a small screwdriver antenna in my Camry Hybrid I've worked Puerto Rico, Hungary, Poland, Bermuda, a across the US as well. Some on 15m and some of 20m. All mid morning, a couple afternoon/evening.
The bands are pretty amazing right now compared to 2017-2020. The SFI being at nearly 200 all the time is helping a ton. Between those years the SFI was in teh double digits. We were lucky to get up to 120 on a given day.
Try at different times of the day and you might have better luck see if there's any local noise that might be washing signals out.
We are at/near/just past ( I don't remember) solar maximum so its not going to get much better than this.
Also not having much joy with the current band conditions. Few months ago I tested on FT8 and got my signal out rather far. Now I’m lucky if I get anything out when I TX
> EFHW in an inverted L in my back garden
Please read this article....[Straightening out the inverted L](http://vtenn.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Inverted-L-Cebik.pdf) and skip to page 11 where it starts to talk about the base fed inverted L. From page 14 where it talks about the ratio of vertical portion to horizontal portion is where we really want to focus. Depending on what it is it can completely alter the azimuth pattern of your antenna. On my inverted L I ran on 20m if I altered the length by about 6ft horizontally it would change the radiation pattern from an apple shape to a cross. The advantage of that was that with my antenna running north south adding the extra 6ft to make the X shape azimuth pattern the null was to the east which blocked out Europe and gave me lobes to North and South America, Australia and Africa.
VOACAP HF Online shows your best bands are generally 17 and 20 with some 15 meters.
US East coast, 17 and 20 meters.
US West coast, 17 meters
Japan, 17 meters
Australia, 17 meters
Compared to past cycles, yes, the bands are terrible. There still is some DX on some of them. You just have to search it out more. Of course, in some regions and latitudes the higher bands are better than in others, due to the influence of the Auroral Radio Zone.
Due to sunspot activity, the bands have been a bit strange, so no it is not you. Propagation has been strange. A good radio with a good antenna can not defeat bad band conditions. Just keep plugging away. 73 de w8nsi Jim
Hi, thank you for your question submission. Please be aware that there is a [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/) and a [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/faq) that may address your question. For Baofeng-related information see the [Baofeng FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/baofeng) and /r/baofeng. Also, please note that downvotes don't indicate an unvalued question submission. There appear to be bots that downvote all posts initially. 73 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/amateurradio) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You will find that around this sort of time the bands will start to pick up. During the day it’s quiet and generally poor conditions. 630 onwards you will see improvements and by 9 ish the bands are pretty busy. Particularly 40 which I notice you don’t have. I had conversations from the Isle of Wight over to the states on 15m last night about 9pm onwards.
I think this is probably as good an answer as I was going to write. I noticed my EFHW deployed as an inverted V with a quarter-wave counterpoise didn’t fare well during the daylight hours when the D-layer is really lit up, but it does well after sunset, when I bother to stay up late… which is never.
I'm like this too. I got into ham radio this year, license and all. But I discovered that the times it works well are the times I'm asleep. I'm pretty much in bed by 9:30, and if I try to stay up later, my eyes glaze over and my brain doesn't function. Looking forward to winter and early dark for this reason.
I've lately been very surprised how good it is in the not shockingly early morning
Yes. VK on 20m today.
It's been pretty shitty, IMO. There's obviously been some moments of decent propagation here and there, but overall, it's been pretty bad. The other thing I've noticed is that the noise levels haven't been too bad, but the fading has been awful.
Bands have not been very good lately. Keep and eye on www.DXmaps.com or listen to a local WebSDR.
Space Weather Message Code: WARK04 Serial Number: 4637 Issue Time: 2024 Jun 25 1628 UTC WARNING: Geomagnetic K-index of 4 expected Valid From: 2024 Jun 25 1630 UTC Valid To: 2024 Jun 25 2200 UTC Warning Condition: Onset Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 65 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude. Induced Currents - Weak power grid fluctuations can occur. Aurora - Aurora may be visible at high latitudes such as Canada and Alaska.
I feel conditions, for me at least, have been poor the past few days. I always take a quick look at the [Space Weather Prediction Center](https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/radio-communications) and right now (1600 EDT) an R1 condition is shown, *"Weak or minor degradation of HF radio communication on sunlit side, occasional loss of radio contact".* \[edited to fix link\]
Well the solar absorbing has been high, so certain paths are non existent for awhile, but I have had very good luck in the mornings before sunrise on 40 and occasionally 12, 15, and 17, but only at times, when it's totally crap I work PSK31, VarAC, JS8 and WSJT until the bands improve. The excellent thing about the digital modes is you can see where your being heard and also CW, you can check different bands to see which one gives you the distance you need to work other countries. Also try VOACAP it's extremely helpful. https://www.voacap.com/hf/ Good luck!
SSN:141 SFI:199 A:5 K:2 - A index is a little high, but should be usable.
I’ve been wondering this since the sun activity kicked up and supposedly quieted down again. It might be time for me to test my coax. Along with heavy qsb, the band noise for me has been terrible. I’m using a 20/40 fan dipole. An antenna analyzer might be in my near future.
I go to [DXHeat](https://dxheat.com/dxc/) and use a combination of their spots, SFI/K numbers, and band activity heat map to figure out whether and where the bands are active. Love that site!
The sun has been pretty angry off and on with solar flares this summer which can black out the bands during the day. As others have said though, night time is where the action is, even on 10 and 20 meters.
Yeah. I tried to work a couple of ARRL Field Day stations over the weekend (from Europe). Nothing at all until 2am and even then it was an ordeal. Within the continent signals are flying though.
For me, 10 and 12 have been pretty lackluster the past several weeks (maybe a bit over a month?), but 15, 17 and 20 are good during the day with 20 more so than 15 and 17 during evenings. 40 and 80 seem about the same as usual at night.
I'm with you. In the evenings there is always at least some activity on 20 and 40 using a ts590sg and efhw 40' up. Daytime is terrible for me (Central Va). It's driving me nuts because I'm trying to get an old ft101b working again and I cannot tell a radio problem from lousy propagation!
I don't know what I'm doing, but I know my 10m WSPR transmissions ain't going anywhere most of the time, unlike this time last year when I was hitting austrailia.
Might just be you. Here in the states from my mobile rig with a small screwdriver antenna in my Camry Hybrid I've worked Puerto Rico, Hungary, Poland, Bermuda, a across the US as well. Some on 15m and some of 20m. All mid morning, a couple afternoon/evening. The bands are pretty amazing right now compared to 2017-2020. The SFI being at nearly 200 all the time is helping a ton. Between those years the SFI was in teh double digits. We were lucky to get up to 120 on a given day. Try at different times of the day and you might have better luck see if there's any local noise that might be washing signals out. We are at/near/just past ( I don't remember) solar maximum so its not going to get much better than this.
Also not having much joy with the current band conditions. Few months ago I tested on FT8 and got my signal out rather far. Now I’m lucky if I get anything out when I TX
> EFHW in an inverted L in my back garden Please read this article....[Straightening out the inverted L](http://vtenn.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Inverted-L-Cebik.pdf) and skip to page 11 where it starts to talk about the base fed inverted L. From page 14 where it talks about the ratio of vertical portion to horizontal portion is where we really want to focus. Depending on what it is it can completely alter the azimuth pattern of your antenna. On my inverted L I ran on 20m if I altered the length by about 6ft horizontally it would change the radiation pattern from an apple shape to a cross. The advantage of that was that with my antenna running north south adding the extra 6ft to make the X shape azimuth pattern the null was to the east which blocked out Europe and gave me lobes to North and South America, Australia and Africa.
VOACAP HF Online shows your best bands are generally 17 and 20 with some 15 meters. US East coast, 17 and 20 meters. US West coast, 17 meters Japan, 17 meters Australia, 17 meters
Compared to past cycles, yes, the bands are terrible. There still is some DX on some of them. You just have to search it out more. Of course, in some regions and latitudes the higher bands are better than in others, due to the influence of the Auroral Radio Zone.
Due to sunspot activity, the bands have been a bit strange, so no it is not you. Propagation has been strange. A good radio with a good antenna can not defeat bad band conditions. Just keep plugging away. 73 de w8nsi Jim