Solar Cycle 25 - HF DX Heaven

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What a difference a few weeks have made, cycle 25 has definitely woken up! A slightly delayed start due to an overlap of cycle 24 causing disturbance to the new born cycle 25 and keeping the flames quenched. But now the its out with the old in with the new as we experience some fantastic DX openings on all of the HF bands. Enjoy! My Fellow DX Friends!

I have been racking up lots of DX as I operate some late night DX, my station has been hitting all over the globe and the bands have stayed wide open until late and often all night long. It has been really addictive and I have found myself active every day from my radio shack in the search of DX stations that are currently booming through. Morning activity /Mobile from the van has also popped up some nice surprises with  JA, VK and ZL signals and a QSO into Brazil whilst on the move with 80 watts. On my return journey I have heard YB and HS 5/9+ whilst driving and listening on the 20m HF band.

A lot of you will be also experiencing the amazing band conditions and loving it I suspect, but for anyone that hasn't yet had the opportunity to get on the air recently now is the time to dust off the equipment and get the wires, beams, verticals or whatever you fancy trying out back up because things are alive and kicking once again on the HF bands. I have kept up with the video streams and uploads and you can catch the band wide open right here as I make some noise across the pond.

The new solar cycle should now continue to propagate the HF bands and we can expect improvement into the next couple of years taking us up to the peak and then dropping back off on the decline. The full cycle is usually around 7 years of peak conditions and 12 years to complete. Below is an image from the space weather prediction center outlining the current position in the cycle and predicted level of sunspot activity which is just what us DX chasers need plenty of. 

Well that is my update from the shack of M0YKS, hope to catch some of you on the next live stream on my YouTube channel. I recently added a BHI DSP Noise eliminating extension speaker to my HF station and its absolutely the bees knees! The quality of received audio/signal out of the BHI DSP is incredible and I am very pleased with it. Again my latest videos on my channel have the speaker inline so you can take a listen for yourself. In the meantime get on the radio and call CQ DX, I have worked tons of operators that run 100 Watts with big signals. I hopefully will catch you soon on the HF bands! 

Until next the post, Thanks for visiting! Stay healthy! Have FUN! 73 Happy hunting, Good DX, de Simon M0YKS  

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