so i was just sitting down with my coffee last tuesday morning kind of half paying attention to the rig and suddenly 28mhz just exploded with stations, i mean i havent heard 10m like that in probably two years at least. worked a couple guys in south america and even heard some european stations coming through around 28.4 before it faded out again. cycle 25 is really starting to deliver i think.

anyway while im at it figured id mention a few things ive seen floating around lately for anyone who hasnt heard — icom apparently confirmed the IC-7760 is actually going to start shipping to dealers sometime this quarter, theres been so much back and forth on that one i honestly stopped believing it but looks like its real this time. also saw that the arrl letter mentioned some changes coming to the vanity callsign fee structure, didnt read the whole thing but worth looking into if thats something you care about.

oh and for anyone into satellites, apparently one of the amateur payloads on a recent launch is working but theres some issues with the downlink, the amsat crowd is working on it. keep an eye on their site if youre into that sort of thing. just thought id throw all this out there since its been a slow week on here

yeah i caught the tail end of that opening, was only on for maybe 20 minutes before it dropped out but managed to snag a ZL which was a nice surprise. my 10m antenna is kind of a compromise dipole in the attic so im never really expecting much but it pulled through. cycle 25 has been consistently surprising me honestly, my old elmer used to say this cycle wasnt going to amount to much and i think hes had to eat those words a few times now lol

on the 7760 thing — ive been half tempted but im not buying anything until i see some actual hands-on reviews from people who arent paid to say nice things about it. the spec sheet looks good but so did a couple other radios that turned out to be kind of meh in practice. ill wait for the dust to settle

wait the arrl is changing the vanity callsign fees? i just applied for one like two months ago, do you know if that affects people who already have theirs or is it just new applications going forward? sorry if this is kind of off topic but now im worried i need to do something