So ive been noticing some really solid openings on 10 meters the past couple weeks, worked a few stations in South America yesterday afternoon with just 50 watts and my vertical which honestly surprised me. Solar cycle 25 doing its thing i guess. Feels like the band is starting to act like it did back around the 2000-2001 peak which is exciting if youre into DX at all.

Also saw that Icom dropped some info about a new HF rig coming later this year, not sure how credible the source was but there was some chatter about it on one of the Facebook groups. Anyone else hear anything about that? And there was apparently a big hamfest in Dayton where some new antenna stuff was announced but i missed it this year so im going off secondhand stuff.

Anyway just wanted to see if others are noticing the same thing on 10 and 15. Been a while since propagation was this fun.

yeah 10m has been wild, i worked Japan twice last week on SSB and im running a pretty modest setup, IC-7300 into a dipole in the attic. my attic dipole. honestly wasnt expecting much. the solar flux has been sitting up around 180-190 on some days and you can really feel it.

about the Icom thing, i heard the same rumors but couldnt pin down anything official. wouldnt surprise me though, theyve been quiet for a bit and usually that means somethings in the pipeline. Kenwood too been hearing whispers. i'll believe it when i see a press release honestly, forum speculation goes sideways fast.

I just got my technician like two months ago and everyone kept telling me HF was complicated and expensive and I'd need a big antenna setup but my neighbor let me try his radio on 10 meters last weekend and I made a contact in Brazil on my first try which was kind of unbelievable to me. Definitely making me want to upgrade to general now. Is this level of propagation normal or is this like a special thing happening right now?