so i was just doing my usual evening thing, checking 50.313 out of habit mostly because 6m has been pretty dead here in the midwest for weeks, and suddenly the waterfall just lit up. like completely filled with signals. i was working stations in florida, georgia, a couple in texas, even got a weak one from somewhere in new england which honestly surprised me given my setup is just a 5 element yagi at about 25 feet.

looked it up and apparently theres been some kind of sporadic-e opening running most of the week. i missed the first couple days of it but caught some good runs thursday and friday evening. logged about 40 new grids in two sessions which for me is kind of a big deal since im still chasing WAS on 6m and this knocked out a few states i was missing.

also saw some chatter about the new IC-705 firmware update that supposedly tweaked the FT8 receive sensitivity a little, anyone actually tested that or is it just placebo? i havent updated mine yet, little nervous to mess with something thats been working fine.

yeah the e-skip has been really something this week, worked a couple stations in puerto rico on wednesday which i dont usually see from here in ohio. 6 meters really is the magic band, never know what youre gonna get.

on the firmware thing, i updated my 705 last weekend and honestly cant tell a huge difference in weak signal receive but i also havent done a proper back to back comparison. the update did fix that annoying thing where the spectrum scope would occasionally freeze up after being on for a few hours, so that alone was worth it to me. i wouldnt stress too much about it, icom has been pretty solid with their updates, havent had one brick anything yet.

just got my general last month and have been lurking on 6m trying to figure out when to actually transmit lol. this thread is helpful, didnt realize sporadic-e openings were this unpredictable. is there like a good website to check if an opening is happening before you sit down at the radio or do you just have to watch the waterfall yourself