so i was just sitting down with my coffee saturday morning and figured id spin the dial on 10 meters just out of habit, not really expecting much, and wow. stations were coming in from europe like crazy, i worked a couple italians and a station in spain without even trying that hard. propagation was genuinely good for like 3 or 4 hours which honestly i havent seen on that band in a while. my antenna is nothing fancy either, just a dipole up about 25 feet so if i was hearing it that well it must have been really cooking.

anyway while im here — has anyone been keeping up with the Yaesu FT-710 stuff? i keep seeing it pop up in reviews and im curious if people actually have hands on experience with it or if its all just youtube guys who got a free unit. also heard rumblings that icom might be doing something new in the HF space but cant find anything solid on that, might just be forum speculation. just curious what everyone's been hearing lately.

Yeah that opening was real, i caught the tail end of it sunday morning. Worked a JA station which was unexpected, thought conditions had died off but apparently there was still some life in the band. Solar flux has been climbing lately which probably explains it, we're heading into a good part of the cycle so hopefully this becomes more regular.

As for the FT-710, my buddy at the club has had one since late last year and seems pretty happy with it. He says the receiver is solid and the built in antenna tuner handles his end-fed without complaining. I dont think its a massive leap over older rigs in terms of raw performance but for a new radio at that price point its apparently competitive. Havent touched one myself though so take that for what its worth.

omg yes i was on 10m saturday too, first time ive actually heard real DX on that band since i got my general last spring. i had no idea what i was doing honestly just tuned around and started hearing these loud signals with european accents and kinda froze up for a second lol. managed to make one contact into germany which is now my furthest ever so that was pretty exciting. still learning the whole DX thing but days like that make me want to actually study up on it more seriously.