so i dont know if anyone else has been watching the wspr spots or just generally hanging out on 10m but holy cow the last few weeks have been something else. i was just sitting there running low power like maybe 10 watts into my end fed and i was getting spots from europe, south america, even a JA station which i honestly wasnt expecting at all on a tuesday afternoon.

its got me thinking about finally dusting off my old tribander that i hasnt used in probably two years because the rotor cable got chewed up by something. anyway been reading that we're really hitting the stride of solar cycle 25 now and the flux numbers have been consistently high. saw something about a new sunspot region rotating into view too.

also heard there was a new handheld coming from yaesu, something in the FT-60 replacement family maybe? i saw a thread somewhere but lost the link. anyone know anything about that or is it just rumor at this point

yeah 10m has been absolutely wild, i worked a station in zimbabwe last week running 100w from my dipole and he came back first call. first call. on 10 meters. from my backyard dipole. i almost fell out of my chair.

the solar flux has been holding above 200 on a lot of days which we havent seen since like 2001-2002 era so this is genuinely exciting stuff especially for anyone who got licensed in the last cycle and never really experienced good HF conditions. get on 10 and 12m as much as you can right now because this window wont last forever, cycle peaks dont stick around.

on the yaesu thing i saw the same rumor but nothing concrete yet. there was supposedly something shown at a trade show in japan but i dont read japanese so i cant confirm anything. wouldnt surprise me though, the FT-60 is getting pretty long in the tooth at this point.

im pretty new to hf, just got my general a few months ago and ive been lurking on 10m trying to figure stuff out. didnt realize conditions were unusually good right now, i just thought this was normal lol. good to know i picked a decent time to upgrade i guess.

what frequencies should i be watching for FT8 specifically? i know its around 28.074 but sometimes i tune around and dont see much activity and im not sure if its my setup or just timing