10 Meters Is Opening, Slowly, But Surely.

 For the last few weeks I have been monitoring 10m FT8, and lately the beacons on 28.200.

A few weeks ago the band started opening to South America from here. There has not been a day within the last 3 -4 weeks without receiving SA stations, mostly from Brazil, and often stations were also coming in from Southern Africa. I suspect that some of this propagation was trans-equatorial propagation (TEP). This fits well into the pattern of TEP being strongest around the Equinox times.

Then stations started coming in from the Far East and Oceania, and the South American stations started coming in during day time, and several stations from Australia. 

The past week the propagation has moved closer to the North American continent, Northern part of South America, and Caribbean stations coming in, and the past few days South Eastern and also North Eastern United states have come through, as well as regular propagation to the Middle East and Atlantic islands like the Canaries and the Azores. These are clearly single hop F2 propagation  

The past week or so I have re-started monitoring 28.200, and  daytime propagation has been detected on this frequency. Almost daily signals from CS3B and ZS6DN, and occasionally very strong signals from the 4X6TU beacon.

To me this means that the F2 propagation on 10m has returned after the deep solar minimum, and I am happy that my favourite HF band is coming to life again.

I suspect that we will see more North Atlantic propagation in the next few months, unless the sun goes very quiet again. That may happen in short periods, but I suspect that we will have good, maybe excellent 10m propagation the next 3 - 5 years or so. Who knows, with the new weak signal digital modes we may even see weak F2 propagation on 6m. That would be exciting. 

The most general predictions for the next solar maximum (cycle 25) is much like the previous cycle, but we can always hope that it will be larger. As a Danish poet said about 100 years ago: "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future" ;)