so ive been watching the chatter on this for a while now and it seems like the IC-7760 is actually starting to ship to some dealers in europe and a few places stateside. saw a couple of unboxing videos pop up this week and honestly it looks like icom did something pretty interesting with the remote head design, like fully separating the RF deck from the control head over a single ethernet cable which is cleaner than i expected.

also been a weird few weeks for band conditions — 10m has been absolutely wild the last couple days, worked a bunch of south american stations on SSB with like 100w and a dipole which almost never happens from my QTH in the midwest. not sure if its a flare or just the cycle peak doing its thing but whatever it is im not complaining. feels like 2001 again honestly.

anyway back to the radio — has anyone actually put hands on a 7760 yet or is this still mostly pre-production hype? curious what the receive is like compared to the 7610 because thats what im running now and the panadapter on that thing spoiled me. wondering if the new one is a meaningful upgrade or just a form factor refresh with a fancier price tag.

yeah the 10m opening this week was something else, i was just spinning the dial Tuesday afternoon and stumbled into a massive pileup for a VP8 station, took me about 45 minutes but i finally got through on my third call. running a yagi at about 35 feet so i had a little help but still, conditions were clearly doing the heavy lifting.

on the 7760 thing i havent seen one in person but a guy in our club says his dealer told him late Q1 deliveries for the US market, which probably means April realistically knowing how these rollouts usually go. the remote head concept makes a lot of sense for mobile installs or shack setups where you dont want a big radio on the desk. whether the receiver is actually better than the 7610 i genuinely dont know — icom hasnt published the blocking dynamic range numbers yet which is a little suspicious or maybe just their usual slow documentation pace.

im pretty new to HF, just got my general last fall, so i dont totally follow all the specs stuff but i did notice 10m was crazy this week too. i was just doing some listening on my little Xiegu G90 and heard all kinds of stuff i never hear. didnt transmit because im still nervous about pile ups lol but it was cool just to hear how alive the band gets. is this kind of opening normal for where we are in the solar cycle or is this unusual even by cycle 25 standards?