DXing on Six Meters
Perseverance - Patience - PropagationWhat does Six Meters mean? Speaking of the 48th latitude basically waiting and waiting and even more waiting. Waiting for the one one- or two-minute opening that might happen (mostly not). Six meters is a challenge of its own because propagation is not at all or hardly predictable and you "have to be there" at the right time. I like to call it the Tragic Band, when you live in latitudes with rare good openings and when others, just a few kilometers away, work the DX and you hear nothing at all because propagation can be so extremely selective. But there are always unexpected surprises which compensate the frustration of an empty band with no signals for long periods of times. Many people then speak of the Magic Band. I call it rather Sexy Meters. So you first of all need the three P’s: perseverance, patience and propagation. Some hardware can also be quite useful. Current setup: M² 6M8GJ, YAESU FTDX5000MP, microHAM KEYER III My radio neighbor Thomas, DL7AV, got me interested in 6 Meters, since he devoted most of his radio career to that magic band and I began my activity on Sexy Meters in October 1998 after purchasing an ICOM IC-706 and installing a 6-meter 5 element M² Yagi on top of my highest tower. ObjectivesMy main interests on Six Meters are the DXCC for the DXCC Challenge, the WAZ (Worked All Zones) award and chasing grids for the VUCC award. Completed my WAS (Worked All States) award in 2022 and all prefectures for the WAJA (Worked All Japan) award on Six in 2021. AntennasI've been using a 5 element M² yagi on top of my highest tower from 1998 until 2007 with great results. However, escpecially in years of low sunspot activity and no F2, every dB counts and we took it down: The 5 element M² had a 5 meter boom and I wanted to try out a 10 meter boom yagi: On July 7, 2007 we installed a new 6m yagi, a 7 element I0JXX design antenna on a 10m boom. First QSO was 1A0KM on July 13 as DXCC entity #172. I was however never happy with the quality and performance of this antenna and installed a M² 6M8GJ, a 8 element on a 13m/42’ 8“ boom in June 2011. It is mounted above the Force 12 interlaced 3 element 40m and 6 element 20m yagi. This is finally a very, very good antenna. Click here to see more pictures of the assembly and installation. DXCCI set my goal to achieve DXCC on 6m. In late October 2000, after a very good DX season, I had worked 26 WAZ zones and reached my 100th DXCC entity after a QSO with Nodir, EY8MM. Nodir visited us in August 2005. The winter 2001/2002 season brought another bunch of incredible F2 openings into Asia, Central and North America which increased my country total to 136 DXCC entities and 32 zones. I've reached 200 current DXCC entities (plus two deleted) on June 23, 2012. See my 6m QSL Collection and the table on the right. Some of the most remarkable openings were on March 29th, 2002, when we were able to work KH7R, K6MIO/KH6 and NH7RO long path in a 40-minute opening, on July 8th, 2003 my first Zone 3 contact with VE7SL, with KL7KY on July 3rd, 2014. See the specials page. You have to be there at the right time but in real life you can't. So I missed a few DXCC entities and some of them by just a few minutes, for example VQ9, V73AT and others. WAZI've confirmed 37 WAZ Zones, all terrestrial contacts, no EME. The last two new ones were Zone 12 in 2012 (CE2/VE7SV) and Zone 1 on July 3, 2014 (KL7KY). We have had propagation to ZL (Zone 32) on Feb 3, 2002 SP coming as close as S5, 9A and I1 but the signals didn't make it to here. The first time I could decode Zone 32 was FK8CP on March 10, 2023 and 3D2AG on May 30, 2023. WASI have reached the 6m WAS #1653 in 2022 with 49 US states confirmed in LoTW and one paper QSL from Nebraska after a very successful sporadic-E season 2022. Grids Squares and VUCC AwardI started late but I began to collect grid squares for the VUCC Award in 2022. Currently 107 fields worked and 1070+ squares. I have applied the VUCC 50 MHz Award in August 2023 with 900 LoTW credits. Next goals
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