I’ve been hearing that the higher bands have been open, but have not been able to check it out myself.
Today, I decided to take a moment, and go see. My first stop was 15 meters. It was dead as a doornail. Well, not exactly. I did hear some local sounds that sound like some kind of telemetry going on. I live near a navy base, so you never know what you may hear. I didn’t hear any CW going on. So I moved on.
I next went to 10 meters. I didn’t expect to find much there since 15 wasn’t sharing up any CW QSOs. I tuned around and was getting nothing, then I stumbled upon a ZL1 calling CQ. I would have happily answered back, but he was sending about 3 times faster than I can receive. I tried to get his whole call so I could ask him to slow down, but never could get the suffix. No matter, after he called CQ about 3 times, there were others on him and I felt like finding someone to send slower anyway. So I moved on.
I found 3 or 4 other QSOs going on, but very weak and I wasn’t able to pick out enough of the conversation to know what was really going on. So I found some unused bandwidth, and called CQ myself. At one point, I *thought* I heard a faint wisp of someone responding to my call. I’m still not sure if it was real or imagined. I called CQ a few more times, but wasn’t able to raise anyone. That’s OK. There’s always next time. Besides, I need to study my code a bit more anyway.
I know that there is a good deal of slow code frequencies and slow code nets down on 40 and 80 meters, but at the moment I’m not on 40 and 80 for anything other than NVIS, so I don’t hear them. Oh, if I only had acreage to build out an antenna farm! 
My noise level on 10 meters was only about S-3, but the noise on 20, 40 and 80 meters is a lot higher here (S-7 and up). I’m seriously considering an active magnetic loop antenna. Supposed to be less noise prone. I don’t mind weak signals if the noise is down.
73…
