Six Metres

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Six Metres, the Magic band

Have you ventured onto 6 yet? If not, why not? This this is the only band that allows easy long haul DX for the class B amateur, so it's well worth investigating. Six metres is a strange band. It's often as quiet as mouse, but will then burst into brief periods of frantic activity. For six months, or more, the band has been almost continually in excellent shape though. We're fortunate at the moment to be at the peak of the sun spot cycle which enhances the winter time F2 propagation, allowing us to work the Americas with relative ease. 2002 is the second peak of this cycle, the previous peak occurring in 2000. The last cycle was also double-peaked.

But even in years at the trough of the solar cycle you can work well into Europe using sporadic E, mainly during the summer. The following map shows the squares I've worked in Europe and the Middle East over the last 18 months, using 100W (at most) into a vertical antenna.

I would expect to be able to work most of these on sporadic E in any year. By comparison, here's a map of squares worked in the Americas over the last few months. These are definitely peak years only contacts, but very gratifying none the less.

Not shown are the contacts into Cape Verde, off the coast of Africa, and Kazakhstan, in Asia. That's five continents on SSB with relative ease. Are you sure you don't want to try the "magic band"?

File under: Category Amateur Radio, Category VHFAnd Up.

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Print this page Find page by browsing, searching or an index Edited March 2, 2005 Copyright (c) Terry Ebdon, all rights reserved.