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LAST UPDATED: 26th August 2010 |
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6m / 50MHz - the MAGIC band! The 2010 Sporadic E season is under way!! 9 June - 6m opens Eu/UK to Japan! For the better equipped stations in Europe and the UK a few Japanese stations were worked, for me I just about heard the strongest one (and that was a very scratchy, marginal copy - the odd letter here and there - so yes I did hear Japan but in all honesty it would not been enough to identify the station had I not known (I could hear the station he was working, so knew it was the JA responding). I am hoping that I will hear a stronger one that I can record this season, but I am astonished by the propagation that 6m is producing at the moment - and this is not even F-layer propagation, we need to wait another year or 2 for that to happen, then the world will open up (so I am lead to believe!). Further update: I have changed antenna once again, this time I am using a 10.5m long OCF (Off Centre Fed) dipole, but I have inserted a small choke (6-7 turns on 3 ferrite rings) on the coax feeder 3m (10 ft) from the feedpoint which turns the antenna into a Windom of sorts (the 10 feet of coax between the choke and feedpoint acts as a top fed vertical radiator). Due to physical limitations the short side of the OCF/Windom is bent at 90 degrees and slopes down from 10m to about 6.5m. Putting hte choke in the feedline has made a big difference on 6m, my local beacon has increased in strength by 4 s-points (although the other local beacon has not changed in strength despite being in a similar direction). Noise pickup is slightly higher now but the increase in signal strength more than makes up for that. I have heard a lot of stations on 6m over the past few weeks, with a good number of all time new DXCC, which takes my total to over 100 - DXCC on 6m at last!! The new ones which took me to the DXCC were: ST2 (Sudan), TR8 (Gabon), A71 (Oman) and SV5 (Rhodes). I was surprised by how strong the ST2 was at one point, although it took a fair amount of waiting before I actually heard him. I watched the DX cluster for spots from G stations and then tuned on to his frequency and monitored - and while I tuned elsewhere I checked back every couple of minutes. Eventually I was rewarded with a signal, which remained audible for over an hour. The A7 was very weak, I did record it (as I did with the ST2) but I have yet to check it to see if it is audible on the recording! I am hoping this season will be a good one as I missed out last year and the year before due to defective/inefficient antennas. The openings seem to be very long at the moment, yesterdays opening was going before I got up and was still going after went to bed! It certainly seems to have got off to a good start. These long openings enabled me to log 44 DXCC in 3 days (which is more than I have logged in some whole years!) and now, barely a month in to the season and I have 64 DXCC in the log (this is including the JA mentioned above, although some would say that it doesn’t count as I didn’t hear the callsign etc. - well as I am not applying for any awards or contests it doesn’t matter, I know I heard it and that is what matters to me ;-) How to ‘predict’ a Sporadic E opening: Well you can’t actually predict a sporadic E opening but you can anticipate when a possible opening may occur as there are certain tell tale signs to look out for: Because of it’s nature sporadic E (Es as it’s commonly known) is just that, sporadic! It can pop up at any time but there are warning signs to a possible opening. If you know what these are, you can be prepared, rather than being caught ‘on the hop’. It’s always worth checking 6m (50MHz), 4m (70MHz) (if you have the capability/license) and 2m (144MHz) during May, June and July (April, August and September do produce Sporadic E, but not as often as May, June and July). If possible monitor the DX cluster for reports, also monitor 15, 12 and 10m for short skip stations from a few 100km. If you begin to hear those and they are strong, the chances are 6m will open up soon. If the signals on 6m become very strong and the distance, try 4m (70MHz) (if you have it). Also keep an FM radio to hand to check the progress of the MUF. If you start hearing strong foreign stations on the high end of the FM band (100MHz or above), then it’s time to warm up the 2m rig. If you have a beam, start off with it pointing South East, as that is where the majority of Sporadic E comes from. Sporadic E tends to be very localized and a station just a few miles away may receive something at s9, whereas you cannot hear a thing! Sometimes the reverse is true of course, so stick with it and your turn will come. High power is not necessary, just a few watts and a simple antenna will get you contacts. A horizontal beam is preferred for the longer distance stations, but not always necessary. Be prepared for short snappy QSO’s, particularly on 2m where the openings are much shorter than 6m (only a matter of a few minutes to perhaps an hour or two, where 6m can be open most of the day and into the night). A typical Sporadic E QSO consists of callsign, report and QTH locator (sometimes known as QRA locator). You may find that on occasion names and brief equipment details are passed, but usually the operators are trying to work as many stations as possible in the opening and you won’t make too many friends by passing on your life history during a Sporadic E opening!! Using a vertical antenna for this type of DXing (although the real 6m operators wouldn’t class these signals as DX!) is that signals can be heard from all round the compass. The disadvantage is that you can end up with multiple signals on the same frequency at the same strength. I think the best combination would be a vertical for general ‘sniffing around’ and a beam for ‘homing in’ on a weak signal. A 5/8th wave vertical mounted at around 10m or more and in the clear will work very well and is not too big at under 4m long. A 3 to 5 element beam mounted about 3m below the vertical will give a good account of itself, giving you upto about 6dB gain (or more if you believe the manufacturers!) over a dipole. 10w into the beam will give you an erp (effective radiated power) of 40w, which is a useful amount of power on this band. Run 25w and you get an erp of 100w (the equivalent of feeding 100w into a half wave dipole). Even with the vertical you will get an erp of 20w for your 10w input — ideal for foundation licensees (come on you M3/M6’s!!). For sporadic E these power levels are more than enough, it’s amazing the signal levels that can be heard when the band is open. An interesting twist this year has been the extended openings to North America and the Caribbean, presumably by some kind of E-layer propagation. These openings on occasion have been hours long and stations in the UK have reported s9 signals for hours on end from all manner of exotic DX. For me, the signals haven’t been that strong, but certainly strong enough to record. Between 0700 and 1000 on some days even better DX had been worked, namely Japan! I’ve not been lucky enough to hear one of these yet but I am hopeful that I will soon. It’s this kind of DX that makes 6m such an intriguing band and why it has such ardent followers. I for one have been ‘living’ on 6m this year, and have enjoyed the DX but much the same as our British weather you can never tell what tomorrow will bring, maybe a new country or maybe the band will be closed. To see your signal meter stay over ‘s9’ for extended periods is pretty common and some of these stations are running low power and simple antennas (like 5w from a mobile into a whip on the roof of a car—one of those was on from Italy yesterday and was as strong as the base stations!). Sporadic E is great fun in the summer and you can work stations running almost no power and not much of an antenna. Make hay from May to September, and possibly a little in November/December because the rest of the year could be quite bare! I have tuned for months without hearing a signal on 6m. This is where the dx cluster comes into it’s own. It’s like having a few thousand ears all tuning around at the same time. With that many listening there won’t be many openings that don’t get reported. I have the cluster running most of the time, if I am at the radio or not. As soon as I see/hear spots for 6, come up I check out where they are from. If they are from the near continent then chances are we will get an opening sometime soon, but if they are spots from much further afield there isn’t too much point in getting excited! This can of course change given the right circumstances. In the Autumn (Fall) months real dx can sometimes be heard. A couple of years ago when we were at the sunspot peak (the second one of this cycle), the MUF rose high enough to allow signals from North America to propagate into Europe. The signal strengths at times were incredible. VE1YX amongst others were well over s9, in fact I think the best signal I heard from North America peaked to nearly 50dB over s9, which is incredibly strong given that my Icom meter is rather mean! Using just 3 watts I made many QSO’s into Canada and the USA. Other notable contacts from my log over the past 3 years have been into Venezuela, Aruba, Brazil, Zambia and the Lebanon. Now if only I had a 5 element beam and 25 watts! I only need Oceania for my WAC on 6m, but I think that may have to wait until the next solar peak in a few years time! If conditions are good around October, there is the chance of paths to North America etc. opening up (although at this stage of the cycle it is more likely to be via multi hop Es than F2, as F2 requires consistently high Solar flux for a period of time before propagation is likely. We live in hope and will be watching the... ....MAGIC BAND! Click the thumbnails below to see full size images of where I have managed to hear on 6m using just a single element antenna. Use the back arrow on your browser to return here.
6m QRA locator Squares heard: 514 in 104 DXCC ** Update** I have now achieved DXCC on 6m - in May 2010 - ST2AR (Sudan) gave me the last country I needed! I am now using a home-made dogleg multiband parallel wire dipole at 10m (with a dedicated 6m section) and it makes a huge difference over the loop - most of the signals I hear on the dipole cannot be heard on the loop (and the loop was superior to the G5RV!). A beam at 10m would be interesting for sure but that is not a possibility here and also it is nice not to have to keep swinging the antenna around to chase the signals. Just using simple single element antennas has enabled me to log over 500 QRA locator squares in 103 countries. SOME OF THE COUNTRIES HEARD ON 6M DURING 2006: AALAND ISL.; AFRICAN ITALY; ALGERIA; ARUBA; AUSTRIA; AZORES; BALEARIC ISL; BELGIUM; BERMUDA; BOSNIA; BULGARIA; CANADA; CANARY ISL.; CORSICA; CRETE; CROATIA; CUBA; CYPRUS; CZECH REP; DENMARK; DOMINICAN REPUBLIC; EIRE; ENGLAND; ESTONIA; FAEROE ISL; FINLAND; FRANCE; GERMANY; GIBRALTAR; GREECE; GREENLAND; GUADELOUPE; GUERNSEY; HUNGARY; ICELAND; ISRAEL; ITALY; JAN MAYEN; LATVIA; LEBANON; LIECHTENSTEIN; LITHUANIA; MALTA; MARTINIQUE; MAURITANIA; MONACO; MONTENEGRO; MOROCCO; NETHERLANDS; NORTHERN IRELAND; NORWAY; POLAND; PORTUGAL; PUERTO RICO; ROMANIA; SAN MARINO; SARDINIA; SCOTLAND; SERBIA; SHETLAND ISLANDS (WAE); SICILY (WAE); SLOVAK REP; SLOVENIA; SPAIN; SPANISH NORTH AFRICA; ST KITTS; SVALBARD; SWEDEN; SWITZERLAND; TAJIKISTAN; TRINIDAD; TURKEY; TURKS AND CAICOS; UK BASES IN CYPRUS; UKRAINE; US VIRGIN ISLANDS; USA; VATICAN; VENEZUELA; WALES TOTAL: 82. I must stress that this includes beacons (where there may not be any active operators at the time I heard them, such as JW). Countries with WAE after them are “Worked all Europe” countries and are not official DXCC countries (or rather entities, but I don’t like that terminology!). Even so, that still leaves 80 ‘proper’ countries heard so far (July 06) which I am amazed at considering my antenna is not designed for 6m and is vertical rather than horizontal. Some of the countries heard in 2010 (so far): AALAND ISL.; AUSTRIA; BAHRAIN; BALEARIC ISL; BELGIUM; BOSNIA; BULGARIA; CANARY ISL.; CORSICA; CRETE; CROATIA; CYPRUS; CZECH REP; DENMARK; DOMINICAN REPUBLIC; ENGLAND; ESTONIA; FAEROE ISL; FINLAND; FRANCE; GERMANY; GIBRALTAR; HUNGARY; ICELAND; ITALY; JAPAN; LATVIA; LITHUANIA; MALTA; MOROCCO; NETHERLANDS; NORWAY; POLAND; PORTUGAL; PUERTO RICO; QATAR; PALESTINE; RHODES; ROMANIA; SAN MARINO; SARDINIA; SCOTLAND; SERBIA; SHETLAND ISLANDS (WAE); SICILY (WAE); SLOVAK REP; SLOVENIA; SPAIN; SWEDEN; SWITZERLAND; TAJIKSTAN; TURKEY; UK BASES IN CYPRUS; UKRAINE; UZBEKISTAN; WALES Suggested 6m European operating frequencies: (lower part of band only shown) (Frequencies shown in red should be kept clear)
Here are some MP3’s of interesting stations/beacons that I have heard on 6m. I will add more as and when I hear them. The recordings prior to 2010 were received with the Wellbrook active loop, the 2010 recordings were using a wire dipole, as shown on the shack page. Click the name to download/play the file Recordings from 2010 season: KP4EIT (Puerto Rico, SSB - 14kb) OY6BEC (Faroe Isl Beacon - 53kb) ST2AR (Sudan, CW with a large pile up! - 53kb) SV5BYR (Rhodes Isl, SSB - 45kb) EA8ACW/P (Canary Isl, SSB - 23kb) A71EM (Oman, CW very weak - 15kb) HI3TEJ (Dominican Republic, SSB - 48kb) CN8IG (Morocco, Beacon - 93kb) Recordings from previous seasons: JW7SIX (Svalbard, Beacon - 111kb) OY6SMC (Faroe Islands, Beacon - 69kb) 5T5DUB (Mauritania, Beacon - 190kb) FM5WD (Martinique, CW - 119kb) GB3LER (Shetland Isl Beacon - 328kb) EY8MM (Tajikistan - 3200kb) - large file (3 MB), not edited yet. 9Y4AT (Trinidad, Beacon - 798kb) HI3TEJ (Dominican Republic, SSB - 174kB) Download a text file of 6m Beacons throughout the world (G3USF) (27kb) as of May 2010
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