Who else loves six meters? As it starts to progress into spring/summer in the Northern Hemisphere, there are lots of opportunities for six meter sporadic E contacts. Thrilling when it happens and you get some awesome distances!
Sadly, my two antennae are UHF/VHF and 10m-80m, while 6m gets caught in the frequency sieve. I've thought about building a Yagi for 6m but then I'd need something to steer it with, and the expense involved for one frequency of the spectrum, at this point, is beyond my budget. I still have so much to explore in the rest of it! That said, I'll ask is 6m used a lot by hams? Honest question, I simply don't know. I do know that 50MHz can travel quite far when conditions are right, but all I've done is read about it, not experienced it.
6m takes incredible patience, but can be rewarding. I think, at least in the United States you have a good amount of 6m operators that you'd work a few during your spring/summer months. Here in VK we have a lot of active 6m operators and we don't have that many hams in the country! You can get on easy with simple antennas, even a vertical made out of coax - That will at least get you on the air and you'll make plenty of contacts around the US and maybe even abroad!
Also, I'm preparing myself for the summer! I'm attaching a 6m "antenna" to my 2m cubical Quad. Same boom, 2 bands
Nice one! I haven't seen much DX from VK to Europe on 6m during this season, I hope plenty of operators are pointing this way. 73!
There are many who use 6M - when the band is open. I have hammed during great 6M propagation and poor and we have been in a blight of good propagation for a few years. There are some openings though and they are real fun - and there is a reason it is called SPORADIC -E propagation. I do however keep a 6M antenna, a simple dipole (rigid elements) and a 20' flagpole ready for those times it is open and that has worked well. FWIW, when I began working 6M it was in good conditions and I worked a large number of stations across the US with 10 watts and a wire dipole at about 15'. Easy to set up something like that antenna wise, wire or rigid, and the reward makes it worthwhile in my not so humble opinion.
I hope that with this Solar Cycle peak we get some nice conditions on 6m propagating via the F2 layer. I guess the main thing is to be prepared for such events!
Back in the day... the early 90's, I worked Steve Gregory, VK3OT, two years in a row during the peak of that cycle -- April I believe. I also worked VK5NY, a VK4 and a VK7 (Tasmania). I was active-duty USAF, living in USAF provided "base housing" on Keesler AFB, MS. I was able to install a short 20-foot tower, and a similarly tall, rotated 18-foot mast with a stack of horizontal 6M yagis spaced 15 or 16-foot apart. Between them, I mounted a 3-ele Cushcraft 10-3CD yagi. 28.885 MHz was used as the 6M liaison or coordination frequency (via scatter), the Internet wasn't really big yet in the early 90's. I was listening to the stateside guys -- out west in NM, TX, then LA -- work Steve and other VK's via that 28.885 liaison that exciting, early weekend afternoon. I heard the prop move west to east, and waited my turn. It worked out 2 years in a row! The first year I worked him with 10-Watts to the stack (with an IC-551), the 2nd year, with about 140-Watts (with a Mirage brick amplifier). At the time, these QSO's were some of the longest that world-renowned 6M expert, VK3OT, had ever worked. I think he indicated he made one contact a bit further east into Alabama, but that was it. Both years proved his point ... the openings were fleeting at about 15 to 30 seconds long -- the edge of long-haul F2 into the States for conventional SSB and CW. Interestingly, I met up with Steve years later when he and his wife actually moved to my town in the Anchorage, Alaska area. They came to Alaska under his wife's teacher exchange program! Talk about fate! Unfortunately, his year-long Alaskan adventure was cut short when his wife hit a moose with their small car! That traumatic experience soured and scared them. BTW, Steve's Alaskan callsign for that short time was KL7SIX. Figures! I don't think he worked ANY 6M DX while in Alaska during his short stay. It's a rare thing! OTOH, 6M DX from the state of Mississippi Gulf Coast, both F2 and trans-equatorial, were somewhat of a common occurrence. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I wonder if Steve has retired by now, and how he's doing? Cheers! Steven, NL7W ... formerly NT0J while operating in the state of Mississippi. dit .. dit.
Once this Solar Cycle gets really fired up, you will see 6m contacts from all over the world, and a friend of mine who has long since become a silent key was a 6m aficionado and worked the world at all hours of the day & night. This was long before FT8 even the internet. Yes I know back when the dinosaurs walked the planet. So we all have much to look forward to. 73 de VK4KX, Bernie
If a rotator is outside your budget, why not build two dipoles, install them N/S and E/W and connect them circular. Or build a halo for 6 m.
I just run a Omni Angle on 6m now after recent antenna destruction. I don't miss it much at all really as activity isn't what it once was. Some JS8 but limited. I get far more of a kick from 2m SSB and it seems a lot more opportunity's to get some tropo/ducting. At least here in the northeast. Investment is far less for an adequate system as I run a scorpion 88 over the dual onmis and 5 ele beam on 6 which took some real estate better suited for another band.
Conditions are not what they once were at least in my area. Read my post above and look for used rotators or catch them on sale. Pretty much every year Yaesu has a promotion on rotators and their smallest one will easily swing a decent setup on the higher band. If not I have much love for stacked Omni angles, no rotator needed and you get some decent gain when stacked.
