so i dont know if anyone else has been paying attention but 6 meters has been absolutely wild the last few days. been working stations i have no business working from my little attic dipole setup. got a QSO with a station in the caribbean yesterday afternoon which honestly blew my mind because i usually cant hear anything past like 500 miles on 6m.

also saw some chatter that the new Icom IC-905 is finally showing up at some dealers, havent seen hands-on reviews yet but the specs on that thing look pretty serious for the bands it covers. curious if anyone here has actually touched one.

anyway just wanted to throw this out there in case people werent watching 50.313 — worth firing up the radio if you havent. propagation feels very Es-ish but its been going on longer than typical sporadic-E usually does for me. maybe something else is going on, not sure.

yeah i caught some of that opening Tuesday evening, worked a couple of Florida stations from up here in the midwest which isnt too crazy but then out of nowhere a Puerto Rico station popped up super strong and we got it done in like 4 exchanges. my neighbor (also a ham, been licensed since the 70s) came over and said it reminded him of some of the openings he used to see back when solar conditions were similar to now. we're climbing toward solar max so this might just be the beginning of a good summer for 6m.

on the IC-905 thing — i saw it at Dayton last year in the display case but they werent letting people actually use it. looked really well built. pricy though, not sure i can justify it when my IC-7300 does everything i actually need.

wait 6 meters does FT8? i thought that was mostly like a HF thing lol. im pretty new and just got my general last month so still figuring out what goes where. do i need a special setup to try that or will my regular rig work if it covers 6m? i have a Yaesu FT-991A which i think does 6m but ive never actually tried it on there