I work, or try to work, many EU activations on 10 m SSB which are extremely difficult to hear.
Not because the activator’s signal is weak per se, but because they are unwittingly overlapped in frequency by much louder, fixed stations in EU who are calling CQ. This problem occurs most often in the very busy segment from 28.350 to 28.550 MHz (roughly typical range – of course it varies quite a bit).
In many cases, if the activator were “in the clear” he could be heard easily and would likely work more interesting DX than the eastern U.S.!
In the interest of encouraging SSB activators to take full advantage of the large amount of spectrum available on 10 m, I made this graphic:
Thanks for the reminder Matt. I suppose the main reason everyone congregates below 28.500 is all US hams can operate between 28.300 and 28.500 and we’d like to work them. But your usage waterfall suggests we should all operate above 28.600 and only when the chasers appear to be drying up, spot for a frequency below 28.500 to work the others.
There are indeed a ton of holders of the Technician license (the class which can’t go above 28.500) in the U.S… But my impression is that there are very few of them who are active on 10 m at all, let alone straining their ears for the very niche pursuit of working DX QRP SOTA buried in the rubble of QRM Alley.
It’s so easy to get a General- or even Extra-class license now, anyone motivated enough to get on 10 m is likely also going to upgrade and have access to the whole band anyway.
It would be interesting if any activators by chance have numbers on the U.S. “Techs” they work on 10 m.
Hi @W4GO,
Great to work you on 10m. This is very useful. I 100% agree. So many times I’m trying a difficult S2S and just can’t because of adjacent signals.
I must admit I usually aim for about 28.420 ish because it’s busy and chance of logging a unique callsign for the 10m challenge is higher.
But the amount of times a station parks next to me after I’ve spotted, without enough space and spatters all over my quiet band….
I can see a couple of reasons why EU SSB and CW ops don’t activate in the 10m 28.6 to 28.9MHz sub-band:
It might well be easier to hear them (due to lack of activity) but nobody probably is listening there for SSB and CW CQs unless they see the senders’ self-spots. The very crowdedness of 28.300–28.500 MHz is no doubt because, worldwide, operation in this band segment is almost exclusively SSB, which is what attracts activators to operate there.
In the UK at least, the band plan recommends those frequencies for wideband signals like digital images.
Very interesting post. And another four weeks of the Challenge to try to benefit from it!
No mention of datamode frequencies I see. Well, FWIW, I would suggest that FT4 (28.180) offers a higher probability for a contact than FT8 (28.074) at the present time. Though this can flip, so I tend to try both these on a 10m activation.
On both CW and SSB, there are obvious advantages and disadvantages of choosing either the busy part of the band, and the quieter areas. In the “thick of it” there is generally more activity - but as pointed out above, you could be unwittingly burying yourself underneath a QRO EU station within the skip zone. On the quieter frequencies the QSO rate might be slower - but more chance of working DX and chasers. Again, I try to do a bit of both.
No mention of FM or AM. I do like to have a look at those frequencies and try a few calls, but very rarely do any actual QSOs materialise. There does seem to be AM activity around 29.050 - 29.100 daily at present. With FM, I’m still not sure whether to use QRGs around 29.200, or those between 29.500 and 29.575.
Anyway, to try and cover all bases, my current 10m activations tend to see me trying calls on (+/-QRM):
28.017 CW
28.059 CW
28.075 FT8
28.181 FT4
28.365 SSB
28.470 SSB
28.595 SSB
29.200 FM
29.550 FM
This will continue to be the case until the end of the year, except for time-limited activations - like Gaulfest when we are trying to squeeze 3 summits in before the bakery social.
