[Icom] 756ProII backlight / band conditions

[Ray, W2EC]

I'm traveling on vacation and stopped at HRO in NH Monday to buy a
756ProII. I have a 20/17/15/10 meter dipole I brought with me in
anticipation of using the rig. However on trying it Tuesday and this
morning I find the bands are dead, as in I barely hear a thing. There
are one or two stations on 20 I can barely hear, and nothing but noise
on the other bands. I've gone thru the book to make sure everything is
set up right,(ant 1 selected and ant connected to Ant 1, rf gain,
everything else I would expect). I get lot's of noise, but virtually no
stations, the few I do hear are so weak they are barely copyable.

I've been off the air for several days so someone PLEASE tell me we have
had a massive solar condition that has wiped out the bands for several
days, and it is not my new 756ProII!

Also, there is a display command Backlight(switches) that doesn't seem
to do anything except adjust the brightness of the s-meter light. There
is no backlighting of any of the switches on the panel under any
slection. Are the pushbuttons/switches etc supposed to be backlite or is
this a problem?

Thanks, Ray  W2EC