[50mhz] 6 meter newbe

[Joe - WDØM]

Hi Bill,

Welcome to the "magic band"!  You'll experience 
some frustration until the band opens up BIG time 
and you can work the world on a wet shoestring 
and 1 watt.  In the meantime, check propagation, 
spend time listening, and then listen some 
more.  You'll find periods when the band opens up 
for a short time, and closes quickly.  Listen at 
the lower end of the band for CW and beacon 
stations (50.060 - 50.080).  Sometimes they come 
in first before you can hear SSB stations.

I too was a late comer to 6M - just got serious 
about it about 5 years ago (been hamming for 45 
years).  I listened for months before I heard a 
few calls and managed to work someone.  Then the 
band opened up and I worked all states in 30 days 
(over 2000 QSOs in one fantastic day).  Of course 
living in Alaska at the time helped a lot.  I've 
move to Colorado and had to start over - I'm up 
to 45 states now, but it's taken me about 2 years 
to get there.  Patience is a virtue on 6M.

Another fun thing to try with 6M is High Speed 
Meteor Scatter, using WSJT, a free software 
program courtesy of Joe, K1JT, which you'll find on the web at:

http://pulsar.princeton.edu/~joe/K1JT/

It's used to bounce 6M signals off 
meteors.  You'll find a "chat" site to discuss it with other aficionados at:

http://www.pingjockey.net/cgi-bin/pingtalk/

High Speed Meteor Scatter gives you something to do until the bands open up.

Hope this helps!

73,

Joe
WDØM



At 02:24 PM 12/8/2006, FireBrick wrote:
>I managed to get my used icom706mkIIg set up.
>I have the 6 meter elements on my Sommer yagi, 
>(nested to 40' right now due to winds).
>
>I see the cluster spots but I've only really 
>heard one station, about 10 miles away.
>
>I do hear noise come up to s7, but nothing intelligible as a signal
>listening 50.125 and .135 USB but so far just buzzes and noise.
>Both the rig and an outboard swr bridge indicate a pretty good match.
>Also have a VL1000 inline but so far just ran barefoot.
>
>I'm still reading this manual and trying to figure out this rig.
>A little confused that when I 'set' the filters, 
>that I got the cw filter with cw and the narrow ssb filter with ssb.
>
>40 + years of hamming, and first time on 6 meters.
>
>
>
>
>-----------------------------------------------------
>Blessed is the end-user who expects nothing, for ye shall not be disappointed.
>-----------------------------------------------------
>
>Bill H. in Chicagoland
>webcams at http://24.14.49.4:8080
>weather at http://hhweather.webhop.org