so i dont know if anyone else has been paying attention but 10 meters has been absolutely wild the last few weeks. im hearing stations from all over the place, worked a few South American guys last tuesday afternoon without even trying, just had the radio on in the background while i was doing other stuff and suddenly PSKreporter is lighting up like crazy.

also saw the announcement that Icom dropped some info about a new HF rig, supposedly a smaller form factor kind of thing aimed at portable ops? havent seen a full spec sheet yet but there was some chatter about it on one of the Facebook groups. not sure how credible it is but a couple people seemed pretty confident it was legit. anyone seen anything more concrete on that?

anyway the solar flux has been hanging up around 200+ lately which probably explains the 10m stuff. if you havent fired up on that band in a while its worth checking out, even with modest antennas youre gonna hear stuff. my vertical has been doing work it has no business doing right now.

yeah 10m has been doing things I havent seen since the last solar max, honestly. worked Japan twice last week on just 100 watts and a dipole up maybe 25 feet. my wife thinks ive lost my mind because i keep running to the shack every time the cluster starts pinging.

re: the Icom thing, i think youre talking about the IC-705 successor rumors? or maybe something different, theres been a lot of speculation floating around. I wouldnt put too much stock in Facebook group stuff until theres an official press release or someone actually handles one at a show. Hamvention is coming up and thats usually where stuff gets announced properly. that said if they do a smaller HF rig with built-in tuner at a decent price point ill be first in line probably.

omg yes i just got my general like two months ago and i had no idea 10m could do this. i thought it was like a dead band from everything i read when studying. set up JS8Call on it last weekend just to try and was getting decodes from Europe which blew my mind. nobody told me propagation could just randomly be this good lol