so i was just doing some casual listening saturday afternoon, wasnt even planning to operate, and i noticed 10m was absolutely alive. like i havent heard it like that in probably two years. was pulling in stations from south america like they were local repeaters. ended up working a few guys in brazil and argentina which honestly i wasnt expecting at all for a random saturday.

also saw some chatter online about the new Icom IC-905 actually starting to ship to some dealers now? havent seen one in person yet but the specs look ridiculous for what it is. curious if anyone here has actually gotten their hands on one or if its still mostly vaporware at the retail level.

anyway point of this post i guess is just... are we finally in the good part of the solar cycle or was that just a fluke? my solar flux numbers have been looking better lately but i dont want to get too excited

yeah i caught the tail end of that opening sunday morning actually, worked a couple guys in Chile which was a first for me on 10m in a long time. the SFI has been creeping up pretty consistently the last few months so i think this is real, not just a fluke. we're heading toward solar max and if the predictions hold we could be in for some genuinely great DX conditions through next year or so. dig out your 10m antennas people haha

on the IC-905 thing, i talked to my local dealer and he said he has a couple on order but couldnt give me a firm date. the price point is pretty steep for most people but for a radio that does everything up through 10GHz out of the box its kind of hard to complain if you're into microwave stuff

wait so 10 meters was open? i had my radio on and didnt even notice, i was probably on 40m doing some slow speed CW practice and totally missed it. im still pretty new and honestly havent really figured out when to check which bands yet, is there like a good resource for knowing when propagation might be good on the higher HF bands? i keep seeing people talk about solar flux but i dont really know what numbers to look for