Is this pretty typical/normal?

I can take a nap on my back and only have two or three hypos in an hour with a pressure of 10. At night I spend most of my time sleeping on my side and typically run with an AHI below 5. However toward morning there will be a 5-10 minute cluster of apneas that will ruin the whole nights numbers..as I roll on my back. Because of that ten minutes I either have to jack the pressure way up the whole night or prevent myself from rolling on my back early in the morning ..about sunrise.

That's what APAP is meant to deal with. Giving you the pressure you need when you need it. Jim

You're right, it's quite likely that those events are occurring while you are in REM and sleeping on your back. You do need that REM sleep, as it's important in many ways. You really do want to prevent your REM from being broken up with apneas, since this interferes with your sleep architecture. Sleep cycles vary through the night and you need the whoe set of cycles for your sleep to do what it should. (Heal the brain and heal the body).

I agree that sleeping on your side can make a big difference for some people in the amount of pressure they need. There are some side sleeping ideas in a thread by Rooster that you might want to look at. He is someone who has a very different pressure sleeping on his side vs sleeping on his back. (something like 20 vs 9, if I remember right).

I often sleep on my side by using a backpack stuffed with a pillow. It works to keep your ahi down, particularly during those REM periods. Lately I haven't been using it and my AHI is somewhat higher than it would be otherwise, but I was having some other problems and need to change positions more often during the night right now.