so i've been loosely following the icom IC-7760 situation since they teased it at hamvention last year and it looks like some dealers are actually starting to show stock or at least take real orders now, not just wishlists. been going back and forth on whether to pull the trigger or just stick with my 7300 which honestly still does everything i need it to do.

also saw some chatter that 6m has been absolutely on fire the last couple weeks, few guys in the club worked some EU stations last tuesday which is pretty rare from our location in the midwest. feels like we might be getting into a good stretch with the solar flux holding up. anyone been taking advantage of it or did i miss the window again like usual

curious if theres any other news floating around i might have missed, i kind of fell off keeping up with things during the winter

yeah the 6m opening last week was something else, i was only on for about an hour but managed to snag a few new grid squares which i wasnt expecting at all. had the amp running at about 500w into a 5 element yagi and the signals were genuinely loud, not the usual marginal stuff you get when the band is barely open. definitely worth keeping an eye on the DX clusters right now if you havent been.

as for the 7760 i looked at the specs when they first announced it and it seems like its really aimed at guys who want to run a remote setup or have a cleaner shack since the control head separates from the RF unit. cool concept but for what most of us actually do day to day i dont think its a huge leap over the 7300 or 7610 honestly. price is going to be the deciding factor for me and from what ive seen its not going to be cheap

I just got my technician license in March so I'm still pretty new to all of this but I've been reading about the IC-7760 too just trying to learn what's out there. Probably way out of my budget for a while but it's fun to follow along. I didn't even know 6 meters could open up to Europe from the US, I thought that kind of thing was only on like 10 or 15 meters. Is that an Es opening or something different? My elmer mentioned sporadic E once but I still don't totally understand when to expect it or how to know when it's happening.