so i dont know if everyone else has been glued to their radios this past week but 6 meters has been absolutely wild. i was just casually monitoring on 50.313 tuesday evening and all of a sudden my screen lit up with stations from the gulf coast, then some caribbean stuff started popping in, then i worked a couple of guys in florida and i'm sitting here in ohio going wait what is happening right now. ended up staying up way too late working a handful of new grids i needed.

also saw some chatter on the local repeater about icom doing something with a new radio announcement? somebody mentioned it at the club meeting but i missed most of it because i got there late. cant find much about it online yet. anyone know what thats about or is it just rumor mill stuff at this point

yeah the Es this season has been something else, i had a similar night last thursday where 6m just opened up out of nowhere around 7pm local and i worked like 14 new grids in maybe 90 minutes. one of those nights where you just dont want to go to bed because you know the second you do it'll close up. my wife has stopped asking why im still up at midnight staring at WSJT-X.

on the icom thing, i think you're maybe thinking of the IC-905 related stuff? or there was some talk about a new entry level HF rig but i cant confirm that's real. icom did post something vague on their japanese site a few weeks back that got people speculating but nothing concrete yet. id take the club meeting rumors with a grain of salt until someone posts a press release or something from Dayton. speaking of which Hamvention isnt that far off and that's usually when the big announcements drop so maybe just wait and see

omg yes i saw the same thing tuesday, i'm up in michigan and had stations popping up from texas and louisiana that i've never seen before on 6m. i'm still pretty new to all this, only got my general like 8 months ago, so this was honestly my first real Es opening on HF/low VHF and i had no idea what i was doing at first. just kept clicking and clicking and somehow logged like 6 contacts before the band dropped. super cool experience even if i have no idea what half the grid squares mean yet lol