I haven't heard a peep on 10m since late June. Literally, not a peep (CW, data, etc).
When the band was open here in W. Michigan earlier this year, heard lots of activity on the technician portion of the 10m band.
One thing that is nice about 10m from what I've observed in my short time being licensed & long time being a SWL'er, everyone seems to tune to an even 5khz step in the USB phone frequencies, which makes doing a band search incredibly quick if your transceiver is scanning in 5Khz steps between band edges. Plus having nice 5Khz steps is pleasing to my OCD
. In the lower HF bands, I often see folks use 1Mhz steps, even with no contests going on; not really a big deal at all, just makes it so scanning through the band is a little slower as your frequency stepping needs to be at most 1Mhz. I like to use 100Khz to better 'dial-in' the folks with minor transmit frequency alignment problems if I'm just listening; I use the RIT to do the actual correction during a QSO though.
I'd work quick to get your general license. Once you get an HF transceiver & proper antenna setup, you'll find yourself listening to the lower bands & be really annoyed you can't participate. It would be like owning a Ferrari while having a restricted drivers license that allows you to only drive from work to home at specific times of the day.
For a great starter setup that is affordable (~$1K), rugged, & a bargain for what you get; I'd investigate an Icom IC-7200 & the Icom AH-4 remote tuner. A proper radial setup & low impedance grounding w/ a 31 ft, or 45 ft, or 90 ft non-resonant vertical / semi-vertical wire antenna will have you reliably pinging Europe & Australia using CW / data on 80 thru 20 m bands w/ fairly frequent SSB phone windows near evening & morning throughout North & South America all the way to Europe & Australia on many occasions.
The really nice thing about the wire antenna setup with a remote tuner (Other than being nearly invisible from the road if you're in an HOA) is that you can also easily attach a long horizontal wire, massive loop, or the common dipole antenna, or just about anything that is made of metal, & it will likely match impedance correctly to your transceiver (it may not radiate or receive well, but at least it will not destroy your radio's PA & not radiate all the RF thru your coax shield). The primary benefit to a remote tuner at the antenna is that the reflected power from the tuner does not have to make a trip back down & back up the coax to hit your antenna again, the reflected energy is bounced back into the antenna directly from the tuner located at the feed point w/ some energy being dissipated in the tuner coils & capacitors due their associated component losses.
With a remote auto-tuner, I've noticed much better results / efficiency with my antenna setups compared to the desktop units; have NEVER had RF radiated back into my shack like I've had with desktop tuners. The remote tuner also stopped my HDTV reception from dropping out during transmit.
Best of luck and get the general license; you'll be more than glad you did.
The site I used & studied from to pass my Tech & General in one sitting was this one:
https://hamstudy.org/general2015
