Steve G1KQH and I remember the 1980s when 6m was open across the Atlantic by F2 and we were wondering if the MUF would go high enough to allow this to occur in this solar peak.
I can recall hearing lots of USA 🇺🇸 stations on 6m SSB with just a low wire dipole. It was just like 10m.
Last autumn there were plenty of F2 openings on 8m FT8 "across the pond" by F2 to the USA, Canada and the Caribbean areas. As I recall these were almost daily.
At the moment there are about 6 countries that have granted radio amateurs access to the 8m band. Others have granted access by means of some kind of experimental licence. Also, I believe others may access the 8m band using ISM rules, the power being dependent on the administration. Several people have had success with 10mW ERP (the limit in the UK) using licence free ISM rules.
In my view the situation is a total mess, which could be simply rectified if administrations gave limited amateur radio access as follows:
I cannot understand why this should be such a problem. Essentially it would give radio amateurs access to a tiny part of the 8m ISM band for serious research.
In the meantime, it would be good to have a list showing which administrations have granted legal amateur radio access to the band and which have allowed experimental access. One possible solution would be for EI7GL (John) who has an excellent blog to add this to his 40MHz pages.
In my view OFCOM (and the RSGB) and the FCC have been unbelievable over this.
See https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=03&month=08&year=2024 .
See https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/house-martin .
Although nobody spotted my QRP FT8, I spotted 3 stations in Spain and one in Croatia. Not bad with my10m antenna.
