I have been reading the forum here and watching videos trying to gather as much info as possible as not to irritate more experience folks with this, however at this moment i'm stumped.

I'm new to LF and I have a Zone VI 8x10 camera. I'm using Ilford Delta 100 and Ilfosol3 for developer. For the exposure: After reading and watching videos, it was recommended to spot meter the highlights and shadows and get an average. I have a Sekonic 758DR meter. For todays shoot, it was about 2:00 p.m. and we had full sun with puffy white clouds here in Florida. I metered the shadows in the bushes (2" @ f/45) and put that in memory and then metered the brightest part of the clouds (1/30 @ f/45) and locked that into memory. I then choose the average function and it told me to expose 1/4 @ f/45. I them scanned the scene to see where the EV would land. The darkest shadows was -3 and the brightest part of the clouds were at +3. I made notes of all these settings. I was told that import shadow detail should be on Zone III if not Zone IV. I adjusted my exposure to 1/2 at f/45 moving the shadows up to Zone III. Realizing that the highlights have also moved, I was going to have to do n-2 developing to get the highlights down to Zone VII.

I took two sheets of the same scene at the same settings so I could do a test in the darkroom. Ilford states for Delta 100 to start at 7:30 for a 1+14 solution. For a drum I'm using a Unicolor motor base and a Cibachrome tank for development. This is only my second development sessions so I'm new at this. Since I'm using constant agitation, Ilford recommends taking 15% off the 7:30. For the first set of negatives I did this (used 6:22) and there was no sky detail, hence why for this session I really wanted to try to wrestle some cloud detail in. Since there wasn't any detail in the sky last time, I was going to make sure to reduce my time. This time I took the 6:22 and reduced 10% and then reduced another 10% for a time of 5:10. I was advised not to go below 5:00. I made sure the developer was at 78°F/20°C. Again, no sky detail. I checked the instructions for the Cibachrome and they said to use 3 ounces, I was advised to fill the cup with water and see how much chemistry I needed (I was using 6 ounces all along from this advice). Ok, for the last sheet I reduced the developer to 3 ounces with the appreciate dilution of Ilfosol 3 developer. I processed the same time. The negative over all has less contrast but no sky detail with the clouds.

The negatives are drying as I type, however I'm at a loss on where things are going wrong and how to adjust. If anyone could recommend something to try I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks...