so i was reading through the ARRL bulletin this morning and apparently theres some proposed changes coming to the 60 meter band allocation, something about additional channels being considered for coordination with international agreements. i might be misreading it honestly, the wording in those FCC documents always makes my head spin a little.

also noticed Icom apparently teased something on their social media last week, looks like it might be a new handheld or a lower cost HF rig — the photo was super blurry and people are going nuts in the comments speculating. anybody seen anything more concrete about that?

on the propagation front, the 10 and 12 meter bands have been absolutely wild lately. worked a station in South Africa yesterday on 10m with just my vertical and 100 watts, couldnt believe it. solar flux has been running pretty high and it shows. feels like solar cycle 25 is really starting to deliver now, way better than the last couple years for sure.

anyway just wanted to see if anyone else is keeping up with all this stuff. feels like a lot happening at once in the hobby right now which is kind of exciting.

yeah the 10 meter opening has been crazy good, ive been working stations almost every afternoon this week and some of the paths have been surprising. got a JA station yesterday at like 3pm local time which i wasnt expecting at all on that band.

on the Icom thing — someone on one of the Facebook groups posted what looks like it might be an FCC ID filing leak, people think it could be a successor to the 705 or something in that family but honestly who knows, it could be anything. i'll believe it when i see the actual press release. Icom tends to keep stuff pretty locked down until they're ready.

the 60 meter stuff i havent dug into yet, bookmarked the bulletin to read tonight. that band always felt a little complicated to me with the fixed channels and coordination requirements, so changes there would be interesting.

wait so is 10 meters actually open right now like for regular contacts or just like sporadic e stuff? im still pretty new and i set up my dipole for 10m a while back but every time i tune around i mostly hear noise. maybe im doing something wrong or maybe i just need to be on at the right time? i have no idea when these openings usually happen during the day.