A chat over the garden fence resulted in permission to extend my 16 m antenna wire. Since Saturday it now ends after 38m at the roof beam of the neighbour’s barn.
The wire is fed in as a random wire via an SGC SG-239.
A hint made me try if I could also use it on 50 Mhz. In fact, it works. I then tried 70 Mhz as well. That works too!
I didn’t expect to get much radiation in the air. But it was enough for E-Sporadic QSOs on both bands.
And there was another nice surprise: a QSO on 50 Mhz was Guru - EA2IF.
If you also have a wire on a tuner - give it a try!
Congrats, Armin, for that unexpected extra room for your wires and the new bands you can use now.
I had a very nice time on 6m working several stations in PA, ON, DL, F and the U.K.
My antenna was a wire too. I made most of my contacts with my broadband inverted vee folded dipole BWD-90 by Barkers & Williamson (U.S.).
Thanks for trying Eric. It was a frustrating experience for me. I called CQ for ages but heard nothing. But what’s worse I could hear nothing tuning across the CW and SSB sub-bands. At first, I suspected my antenna or a faulty connection but then I could hear the GB3BUX 6m repeater well. And I could hear strong signals on 30m on the 6m dipole. I tuned to Tom’s data frequency (50.313) and could a strong woo-woo-woo sound which I suspect was Tom or a chaser.
I’m new to 6m and was excited to hear so many CW and SSB stations a few days ago on 6m when parked up on a [non SOTA] hill and had a few EU contacts with my FT817 and vertical mounted on the car roof. That was earlier in the day than this evening’s session. Maybe the MUF had dropped too low or maybe there was sporadic E a few days ago and not today.
I’m going to try again in the next week or so but earlier in the afternoon and I’ll take both the 6m dipole and vertical so I can compare them and rule out any antenna problem.
Hi Eric @F5JKK ,
I searched on the internet for the 6m band allocation in France. Even on dedicated 6m sites I read it’s different but nobody states what it is. Would you please tell me what the CW subband or COA is in France.
I’ll bet getting some SOTA QSOs is big fun ! There was a huge amount of 6 meter postings yesterday from east coast USA to Europe. I hope you can catch some of that action! I’ve yet to work Europe or Africa on 6 from California. That would be a big time thrill after about 64 years of fooling with 6 meters!
73
John, K6YK
Thanks for the info, Eric. The UK allocation goes down to 50.000MHz and I hear lots of other EU CW stations between 50.070 and 50.100 but not French ones. Now I know why; I need to look above 50.110MHz. I hope to do 6m CW on a local SOTA tomorrow [if conditions are okay]
Okay, that makes more sense. I was just reading the RSGB explanation of the UK 6m band plan and it says 50.100 – 50.130MHz is the DX window designated for CW and SSB. contacts between continents only
That would have been a problem if France had allocation only above 50.110. But as you say it’s below 50.110 so G and F stations can work each other in the same sub-band as the rest of EU.
Quoting the RSGB again, this statement also confused me: Most Europe-wide CW and SSB activity will be conducted between 50.130 – 50.300MHz although you should be aware that some countries (such as France) do not have the same band allocations as in the UK.
I’ve only recently started to use 6m which is probably why I hadn’t heard any F stations yet.
The 6m bandplan is always a little convoluted. If you want to bring every bandpoliceman out from their hiding places go and call CQ DX between 50.1 and 50.13 when there’s multi hop SpE about and you can hear African or South American stations. I guarantee some goon will tell you it’s for intercontinental QSOs only not Europeans and they’ll do this over the top of LU/PY/CE station that was replying to your CQ!
It’s complicated when other countries have different allocations or band plans that don’t always match with your own, so it calls for flexibility and tolerance. I think that’s why it’s sensible that RSGB band plans are advisory rather than mandatory.
CW down to 50.110