so i was just messing around on 10 meters yesterday afternoon, not really expecting much, and all of a sudden the band just exploded open. was working stations in south america like they were across town, S9 signals just pouring in. ran a bunch of contacts in about an hour and a half before it faded out. honestly forgot how good 10m can be when the solar cycle cooperates, we havent seen conditions like this consistently in a long time and its been a real treat lately.

also wanted to bring up the new IC-7760 that Icom apparently announced — saw some chatter about it on a couple other forums and there's a video floating around showing the remote head setup. looks like they're really leaning into the remote operation angle which makes sense given how many people are dealing with HOA situations these days. i havent seen official US pricing yet but the Japanese market price someone converted was... not cheap. curious if anyone here has more info on it or has seen hands-on coverage from a hamfest or dealer demo.

anyway just thought id share, felt like one of those days that reminds you why you got into this hobby in the first place.

yeah i caught the tail end of that opening, maybe the last 20 minutes or so before it dropped out here in the midwest. still managed to log a few VPs and a LU which was nice. the solar flux has been creeping up pretty steadily this month and some of the propagation sites are showing some optimistic numbers for the next few weeks so fingers crossed we get more of that.

on the Icom thing — i saw the same video i think, the one where the guy is demoing it at some japanese electronics show? the remote head design does look slick but honestly my first thought was 'how much is this gonna cost to repair in 5 years' lol. not trying to be negative i actually really like my 7300 and Icom makes solid gear, just getting to the age where i think about that stuff. would love to hear from anyone who got to actually touch one at Dayton or wherever.

wait 10m was open?? i had the radio on 40 all day doing some casual rag chewing and completely missed it. that's always how it goes lol. i really need to set up some kind of alert for band openings, do people use DX cluster notifications for that or is there a better way? still pretty new to HF and figuring out the whole propagation thing, it still kind of feels like magic to me honestly.