so i was just doing some casual monitoring on 50.313 yesterday afternoon, wasnt really expecting much, and all of a sudden i started hearing stations coming in from what looked like the gulf coast and then some florida stations just absolutely booming in. ran outside to check my antenna wasnt broken or something because i genuinely couldnt believe the signal strength. ended up working like 14 new grids in about two hours which for me is unreal, i usually struggle to work anything past 300 miles on 6.

also saw some chatter on the reflector about the new Icom IC-905 actually shipping to a few dealers now? not sure if thats confirmed or just rumor at this point but if anyone has seen one in the wild id love to hear about it. been on the fence about whether to upgrade my VHF/UHF setup for a while now and that radio keeps coming up in conversations.

anyway just wanted to share because it was one of those evenings that reminds you why you bother putting up antennas in the first place

yeah the Es was absolutely firing, i caught the tail end of it around 7pm local and even managed a couple of contacts into the caribbean which i havent done in ages. my old IC-746 was handling it fine but i kept wishing i had something with a better waterfall display just to see what was actually happening across the band. as for the 905, i talked to a guy at the local club meeting last thursday who said his dealer told him maybe another 4-6 weeks before stock really arrives but who knows, dealer ETAs are basically fiction half the time. still really curious about the microwave bands on that thing though, the idea of doing 10 ghz from a handheld-ish form factor is wild to me

omg i totally missed it, was stuck at work until like 9 and by the time i got home and fired up the radio it was gone. this always happens to me lol. im still pretty new to 6m, only got my general like 8 months ago and i still dont really understand how to predict when the sporadic e is going to open. is there a good site or something to watch? i know about dxmaps but half the time i dont know what im looking at