so ive been seeing a lot of chatter on various groups about 10 meters being absolutely wild the last few weeks, cycle 25 really seems to be delivering. caught some DX last weekend that i havent been able to work in probably 8 or 9 years, pulled in a couple stations from South America on just my little vertical with no amp which honestly shocked me. if you havent been spinning the dial around 28 MHz lately you're really missing out right now.

also on a different note, saw some photos floating around of what looks like a new handheld from Yaesu, cant find much confirmed info yet but the form factor looks different from the FT-5D, someone on one of the facebook groups was saying its supposed to have some kind of improved GPS implementation but who knows how accurate that is at this point. anyone seen anything more concrete about it? or heard anything from dealers?

anyway mostly just wanted to post because the band conditions have been so good and i feel like not enough people know to go check 10m right now, even if you're just a tech license you can get on there and have a blast.

yeah 10m has been nuts, i worked Japan twice last tuesday afternoon and i'm only running like 50 watts into a dipole in my attic. my wife thought i was making stuff up when i told her lol. solar flux index has been consistently high and the K index has been staying pretty tame which is kind of the sweet spot. honestly this is the best i've seen it since i got licensed back in 2010 or so, really glad i held onto that HF rig through the lean years of the cycle.

on the Yaesu thing, i saw the same photos and also saw some specs that may or may not be legit. supposedly dual band but with a wider receive range, but until its actually announced officially i take all of it with a big grain of salt. Yaesu tends to not say much until they're basically ready to ship. either way if the price is anything like the FT-5D was at launch i'll probably wait for it to come down a bit before jumping on it.

wait so technicians can use 10 meters? i thought we were pretty limited on HF, i just got my ticket in the spring and have mostly been doing 2m and 70cm stuff. is there a specific portion of the band or the whole thing? asking because i actually have an old radio that might cover it and i had no idea this was even an option for me