so i was just poking around on 10 meters yesterday afternoon, not really expecting much since its been pretty quiet up here in the northeast, and all of a sudden the band just lit up. I worked a bunch of stations in South America and even snagged a couple Europeans before it faded out around 4pm local. its been so long since ive seen 10m do anything serious that i almost forgot what a real opening feels like honestly.

anyway while i was waiting for the band to come back i was reading over on eham and apparently Icom has been teasing something new — looks like it might be a mid-range HF/VHF all mode rig, theres a photo floating around but nobody really knows the specs yet. could be interesting or could be another thing priced way out of reach for most of us, hard to say. anyone heard anything more concrete about that? i saw one post claiming it would sit between the 7300 and 7610 price-wise but i dont know how reliable that source is.

also for anyone interested, there's a special event station running this weekend for some kind of regional hamfest, i think its somewhere in the mid-atlantic area but i'd have to dig up the callsign again. worth keeping an ear out on 14.250 or so if you're around.

yeah i caught the tail end of that opening, was around 28.400 and heard a few Brazilian stations but my antenna situation is kind of a mess right now so i couldnt get anyone to come back to me. frustrating but at least it means the cycle is doing something. its been ages.

on the Icom thing, ive seen that same blurry photo going around and my take is its probably just a refresh of something existing. they tend to do that every few years and rebrand it. but i'll admit if it comes in under 1500 bucks with decent filtering i might actually pay attention. the 7300 is still a great radio but its getting a little long in the tooth for some of the newer digital mode stuff people are doing.

omg wait i had no idea 10m was even a thing to try, im pretty new and i only have a technician right now so i can only do a tiny slice of 10m but i did notice some weird signals on my RTL-SDR dongle yesterday around that time and didnt know what i was looking at. maybe that was it? is there somewhere i can check band conditions in real time or do you just kind of have to listen around and figure it out