So ive been seeing some chatter on a few other forums about Icom possibly dropping something new in the HF lineup later this year, cant find anything concrete but a couple guys at the club meeting last week were talking about it like it was pretty much confirmed. Anyone else heard anything? I take all the pre-release rumor stuff with a huge grain of salt after the whole IC-705 hype cycle took forever but still its fun to speculate.

Also completely separate topic but 17 meters has been absolutely wild this past week. I made contacts into eastern europe and got a pretty solid signal report from a station in ukraine which honestly surprised me given everything going on over there. Those guys are still on the air which I always find kind of remarkable. 10 meters also had a decent opening yesterday afternoon around 1800 UTC if anyone was paying attention, worked a few south american stations without even trying hard.

Anyway if anyone has actual info on any upcoming gear releases or heard about any big events coming up id love to know, I feel like I miss half the news unless someone tells me directly because I dont always keep up with the ARRL stuff.

yeah the 17m opening was real, i was on around the same time and logged a YO station and a couple OM prefixes back to back which I dont see that often from here in the midwest. propagation has been pretty generous lately with the solar flux hanging up in the 150s most days. honestly feels like the good old days a little bit.

on the Icom thing I saw a post on eham that someone spotted what looked like an FCC filing for an unannounced model but those things can mean anything or nothing at all. wouldnt get too excited yet. that said I am in the market for something to replace my aging IC-7300, its still a great radio but I keep eyeing the 7610 and wondering if I should just pull the trigger instead of waiting around for something that may or may not exist.

I'm pretty new to HF, just got my general a few months ago and I've been lurking on this forum trying to figure out what bands to focus on. This is actually really helpful to hear that 10 and 17 have been good lately because I set up my antenna for 20 meters and havent really tried much else. Do you need a different antenna for 17 or can a 20m dipole work on it with a tuner? sorry if thats a dumb question just trying to figure out what im working with before I go buying more wire.