7 Jul 2014

6m - past the best?

I am beginning to think that 6m is now past its best both for Es opportunities and, of course, for F2 propagation. Almost zero Es on 6m in the last few days, mainly locals and a little GDX. I may give it a few more days before QSYing back down to 10m where both Es and F2 DX are more plentiful.

10m conditions should be good for N-S F2. Sunspot count is 256 (high) and 20-30MHz propagation is forecast to be "normal".

If anything, solar activity has staged a bit of a comeback lately, but this may be just a blip.

UPDATE 1545z: As if to persuade me to stay on 6m, CN8LI (2113km) was spotted at 1450z.

UPDATE 1810z:  No more Es here since CN8LI at 1450z. One blog reader tells me that I should try JT65 as there is more activity. JT9-1 worked well for me on MF with international 2-way QSOs with very low mW ERP. I think JT65 is more commonly used on 6m?
at 13:49
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good day Roger,

Don't give on 6 so quick. VE7SL in Western Canada is reporting some very good conditions on 6:

http://ve7sl.blogspot.ca/

I was also messing about on 6m yesterday (the 6th) after having been rather frustrated with it's lackluster performance during June in my location. It seems that I am just a wee bit too far north to get in on a lot of the 6m openings further south of me but sometimes I can get in on some good openings and yesterday was one of them.

My interests have been leaning towards 6m WSPR and trying meteor scatter. Unfortunately it seems that 6m WSPR in North America does not have much of a following as you have noted. However, my big discovery was just how much JT65 terresstial activity there is on 6m. And, it seems that when I don't hear anything else on 6m I will oftern just hear the familiar tones of JT65 just above the noise on 50.276 and am pleasantly suprised by the numer of decodes I see.

You don't talk of JT65 but I think perhaps it might provide some interesting activity over that way as well. JT65-HF for Windows works well and while JT65 is more of a QSO mode than WSPR, JT65-HF does log online to a database much the same as WSPR although I forget the url at the moment - a quick search should find it however.

Might be work giving it a try.

cheers, Graham ve3gtc

Mon Jul 07, 05:39:00 pm GMT+1

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