so i dont know if anyone else has been paying attention to 10 meters lately but holy cow the band has been absolutely ripping open pretty much every afternoon this week. im seeing spots from south america, japan, even some ZL stations coming through and the signals are strong, like -3 to +10 db stuff, not the usual marginal contacts.

been running my IC-7300 into a simple dipole at about 25 feet and im getting into places i never thought possible with that setup. logged a bunch of new countries in the last few days which is exciting. i know we're heading toward solar max so maybe this is just the beginning but it really does feel different than even last month.

also heard there's a new firmware update for the 7300 that improves the FT8 waterfall display or something? havent had a chance to look into it but curious if anyone has installed it. anyway just wanted to share the good news in case some of you havent fired up the rig in a while - worth checking out 10m right now for sure.

yeah 10m has been something else lately. i had a qso with a VP8 station last tuesday which was honestly the highlight of my year so far. been chasing that one for a while. the solar flux has been creeping up pretty consistently and some of the propagation sites are showing numbers i havent seen since like 2014 so this could keep going for a while before it peaks and then starts the slow decline again. enjoy it while it lasts is my advice, these windows dont stay open forever and the low bands will have their time again in a few years.

on the firmware thing, i did update mine a few weeks back and honestly i cant tell a huge difference day to day but supposedly it helps with some audio processing stuff. the update process was painless at least.

omg this is so good to hear, i just got my technician ticket like 6 weeks ago and ive been mostly doing 2m FM stuff because i wasnt sure if i could even do HF yet but i think i can transmit on parts of 10m right? gonna have to look that up again. my elmer has an old radio he said i could borrow to try it out, this thread is making me actually wanna do it this weekend