Thursday, June 8, 2017

The 6m band holy grail

For us here in Europe the holy grail of the 6m band would be working Japan on 50MHz. There are several thoughts about how a distance like this can happen. But at least you need ES propagation or Sporadic E just what you like to call it. This happens only a few times a year and only at a small timeslot around 9 UTC it is possible to hear and transmit your signal to Japan. There are years that this doesn't even happen at all. With JT65/JT9 mode it is a lot easier to spot Japan, but a QSO is still difficult as the JT modes are just too slow. However I managed to spot a few Japanese, best distance was 9125km spotted JR2WYD. My neighbour PA0O even worked Korea on 6m for the first time in his 30 years DXing on the 6m band!  I was surprised I spotted DS4EOI from Korea today at -16dB myself, that's a great signal on JT65! Think of my antenna system which consists of my Watson W2000 triband at only 6m height and 3 pieces on Aircell7 coax all connected through PL connectors. Crappy 6m setup you would say. Imagine what could happen if I had my mast and 5 element 6m yagi up!



Another spot intrigues me. N6ML at that time of the day. Strange propagation....


4 comments:

Hans said...

Hoi Bas, 6meter wordt niet voor niets "The Magic Band" genoemd. Als hij eenmaal open is en er zijn condities dan kun je de verbindingen maken die je niet voor mogelijk had gevonden. Profiteer er van. Mijn V200 gaat morgen (veel te laat) het dak op. 73 Hans, PE1BVQ

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Hans, ik hoop dat je nog veel verbindingen kunt maken met de V2000 op de magic band...73, Bas

Roger G3XBM said...

Nothing from Japan again today (Saturday), although Japan was being worked from GU on 6m JT65.

PE4BAS, Bas said...

6m is a strange band. It depends very much from were you are. It could be propagation is competlely different between 2 stations that are 50km apart. 73, Bas