so ive been following the icom IC-7760 situation for a while now and it seems like dealers are finally starting to get firm dates, at least thats what my local shop told me last week. guy there said he had a few pre-orders already and was expecting them sometime this quarter but wouldnt give me a straight answer beyond that. anyone else heard more concrete info

also completely unrelated but 10m has been absolutely nuts this past week or two. worked a pile of stuff i normally cant touch on a regular afternoon, got into south america easy and even had a couple of JA stations call me which almost never happens from here. cycle 25 really seems like its picking up steam and if you havent been on the HF bands lately you might want to dust off whatever you have and give it a shot

curious if anyone went to hamvention this year and heard any other news about upcoming gear from the other manufacturers, felt like i missed out not going

yeah the 7760 thing has been frustrating, feels like icom has been teasing it forever. i saw some posts on one of the facebook groups where a guy had hands on time with it at a hamfest somewhere in europe and said the ergonomics were way better than he expected but couldnt say much about actual rx performance. take that for what its worth

and yes 10m has been wild, i havent seen conditions like this since i got back into the hobby around 2012 or so during the tail end of cycle 24. ran a little impromptu contest session on FT8 last saturday afternoon and my log filled up faster than it ever has. made a few CW contacts too which was nice, the band felt alive in a way that SSB propagation especially just does for you, hard to explain if youve never experienced a real cycle peak

I only got my tech ticket in March so im still figuring out what bands I can even use but someone at my club meeting mentioned 10m is good for technicians too? gonna have to look that up. also didnt know hamvention was a thing until like two weeks ago, is it worth going as a new person or is it mostly for people who already know everything