so i dont know if anyone else has been spending time on 10 meters lately but holy cow the band has been absolutely alive this past couple weeks. im seeing stations from all over europe and south america coming in strong, like genuine S7-S9 signals on FT8, not just the weak marginal stuff you usually get when its just barely open.

i ran into a post somewhere (might have been the DX bulletin, cant remember) saying solar flux has been sitting pretty high and we're getting some nice F2 propagation going. made about 40 new countries in the last 10 days running like 50 watts to my dipole in the attic which honestly surprised me. thought my setup was too compromised to do much but apparently not when the band cooperates.

also heard a rumor that Icom is supposed to announce something at the Tokyo Hamfair later this year, people are speculating its a new HF rig but who knows. anyone got any actual info on that? or just the usual internet speculation

yeah 10m has been really good, i worked a ZL station last thursday afternoon on SSB which i definitely wasn't expecting. just called CQ on a whim and he came right back. the solar numbers have been solid, SFI was up around 180 something for a few days there which makes a huge difference obvsiously.

on the icom thing, i saw the same speculation but i honestly think its just people hoping. they refreshed the IC-7300 line not that long ago so i doubt theres a whole new HF flagship coming so soon. could be wrong though, companies do weird things. Yaesu has been pretty quiet too which either means nothing is happening or something big is coming, hard to tell with them.

this is actually really encouraging to read as someone who just got their general a few months ago and hasnt really tried HF much yet. i have a little 100w radio and a wire antenna in the backyard that i kind of threw up in a hurry and wasnt sure if it would actually do anything useful. maybe i should try 10m this weekend and see what happens. whats the main FT8 frequency on 10m again, is it 28.074?