so i was browsing around last night and stumbled onto some chatter about Icom apparently getting ready to release something new in the HF portable space, cant find the original source now but a few people on another forum were talking about it and it sounded pretty credible. anyone else heard anything about this? i know rumors fly around constantly in this hobby but the person who mentioned it seemed to know what they were talking about.

also completely unrelated but 10 meters has been absolutely wild the last couple weeks if you havent been on there you're missing out. had a QSO yesterday with a station in South Africa running like 50 watts and he was 59 into my modest dipole setup. cycle 25 really delivering lately. feels like the old days honestly.

anyway if anyone has actual info on the Icom thing or any other new gear on the horizon would love to hear it. been thinking about adding a portable rig for SOTA stuff and the timing might work out.

yeah ive seen some of that talk too, think it was on one of the Facebook groups maybe? someone posted what looked like a FCC filing or something but i didnt look too closely. take it with a grain of salt until Icom actually says something official, they tend to keep things pretty locked down until the announcement. remember how long the IC-705 rumors went on before anything concrete came out.

on the 10m thing though, completely agree. i worked like 6 new DXCC entities last weekend just casually spinning the dial on a Saturday afternoon. my antenna situation is not great and it didnt even matter. if you're doing SOTA you really want to be taking advantage of this right now, conditions like this wont last forever and we're probably getting close to the solar max or are already past it depending on who you ask.

oh man 10 meters has been nuts, im pretty new to HF like only got my general a few months ago and i honestly thought people were exaggerating when they talked about band openings but wow. made my first ever DX contact last week into Japan from the midwest and i was shaking a little bit not gonna lie. just a little wire antenna i threw up in the backyard.

dont know anything about the icom release thing but im keeping an eye on hamradio360 and some of the youtube channels for news, they usually pick stuff up pretty fast when announcements happen.