So ive been seeing a lot of chatter about the IC-905 on various groups and someone at our club meeting last week was going on about it for like 20 minutes straight. I'll be honest I zoned out a bit but from what I gathered its doing some pretty wild stuff on the microwave bands which is not something I ever thought id be interested in but here we are.

Also unrelated but kind of related — anyone been noticing 10 meters lately? We had a solid opening here in the midwest last thursday afternoon, worked a bunch of south american stations without even trying, was just sitting there with the radio on in the background and suddenly the band was just alive. Reminded me of why I got into this hobby in the first place honestly.

Anyway back to the original question, has anyone actually put hands on the 905 or is this still mostly a "wait for stock" situation everywhere. And is the price as bad as people are saying or is that just the usual sticker shock that goes away after a week

yeah the 10m opening you're talking about I think hit pretty wide, I was working the east coast from out here in Colorado and signals were genuinely loud, like S7-S9 on some of them. One guy from Brazil was absolutely booming in, had a nice little ragchew with him for maybe 15 minutes before it started fading. We're definitely climbing toward the solar max so expect more of that.

On the IC-905 I havent seen one in person but a buddy who went to Dayton last year said Icom had one on display and it looked seriously impressive for the upper bands. The modular design thing is what gets me, being able to add different RF units for different band ranges is clever. Price wise I think its sitting around $2500 depending on configuration which yeah thats a lot but for what it does on 1.2 gig and above its probably fair if you're into that weak signal microwave stuff. I'm not rich enough to find out personally lol

omg yes the 10 meter thing, I literally just got my general last month and my elmer told me to park on 28.400 and I thought he was messing with me at first because the band sounded dead. Then two days later I come back and its like a completely different band. worked my first DX ever, a station in Argentina, I was shaking a little not gonna lie. ham radio is wild sometimes.

no idea about the icom thing im still just using a borrowed radio so im not in the market for anything fancy but it sounds cool from what you're describing