By Ken Neubeck, WB2AMU

The Magic Band of 6 Meters has seen growth in activity, particularly during the past five years, to the point where there have been more clubs taking equipment for 6-meter operation during Field Day, the premier Amateur Radio event. 1998 may well mark the year in which the turning point occurred for 6 Meters, when it became one of the premium bands for clubs to operate on during Field Day. This is because many clubs in the U.S. and Canada that remembered to take 6-meter gear with them were rewarded with two back-to-back days of Sporadic-E activity on 27-28 June that was both long and had wide coverage. Based on the logs generated from various clubs throughout North America, it was hard to imagine that there was any area that did not see some sort of skip activity during the 24-hour period! The Magic Band at many locations became the supernatural band! 

Because of the terrific openings and the large number of stations present on 6 Meters during Field Day, many clubs throughout the country easily made over 100 QSOs on 6 Meters with several clubs exceeding 200 QSOs. One of the more active stations, K4TLH, out of North Florida hit the 400 QSO mark during the two-day period. It seemed like the best place to be for 6-Meter action was in the middle of the country in the 8, 9 and Ø call areas, as skip was working both east and west from there. K9BGL, out of Illinois, said on the air that he worked all 48 contiguous states during the Field Day period. Many clubs experienced double-hop Sporadic-E during Sunday morning. How about this for a band that has often been neglected in the past?

I set up and operated the 6M station for the Peconic ARC, W2AMC, out of Eastern Long Island at the Hortonís Point lighthouse in Southold and saw the best band conditions on 6 Meters ever during the Field Day period! We ran 150 Watts into a 3-element beam up 22 feet at our 80-feet-plus height above sea level, from our location on the north shore of the island overlooking the Long Island Sound. At W2AMC, we worked over 265 stations on 6 Meters (over 200 of them via Sporadic-E and the rest by line-of-sight). There were so many stations to be worked on 6 Meters that it was the number one band for our Field Day group (as it was for many other groups in the U.S.), accounting for almost a quarter of all of the contacts during the FD period. During one particular one-hour stretch of time on Sunday from 1220Z to 1320Z, we worked 65 stations. We also saw double hop Sporadic-E during Sunday morning with contacts into Colorado, Utah and Idaho. We basically had the beam pointed west during the entire time on Sunday. Another local club station on Long Island was the Radio Central Club out of Rocky Point, about 30 miles west of W2AMC, and they made around the same number of QSOs on 6 Meters as we did at W2AMC. 

Yet, while listening to 6 Meters during some band openings days after the contest, I heard some stations say that they did not experience much activity and questioned whether they should bother taking 6 Meters to their Field Day group next year. I noticed that these stations were from locations that I had worked during the furious action on Sunday morning. All I can say is that perhaps they did not leave the 6-meter rig on or check the band periodically to take advantage of skip activity. It is almost a safe assumption to say that at some time during the 1998 Field Day period, there was Sporadic-E activity through almost all of the U.S. 

I know what youíre thinking: Why should you take 6 Meters when you may be in an area of little line-of-sight activity (say a place like Wyoming)? To this I say, can you afford not to? I even heard a Wyoming Field Day group briefly on the band this year and I am sure that they were glad they had 6 Meters. They were probably cleaning up with the large number of stations throughout the country that were coming through on Sporadic-E skip. The odds are always good that some Sporadic-E activity will be seen during Field Day as the months of June and July are the best for Sporadic-E for stations in the Northern Hemisphere. Even in the worst conditions, which happened during our Field Day in 1997, I was able to work 10 stations via Sporadic-E while working another 90 via line-of-sight.

For those stations in locations that fall into this situation, take the 6-meter rig and leave it parked on 50.125 during the contest while you operate other bands. If you hear some activity break through, you can take advantage of the skip conditions. If you have an HF+6 package, make a point to periodically check up and down the band during the Field Day period. Remember the 6-meter station is a VHF station and does not count as a transmitter toward your transmitter class in the scoring! There is no excuse not to monitor the band at some time during Field Day.

It's easy to set up a modest station on 6 Meters for Field Day. An omni-directional antenna such as a squalo or Saturn Six will work, but not always during marginal conditions. I recommend some sort of directional antenna, such as a two- or three-element Yagi, be put up as high as possible. This can be accomplished by using telescoping mast or five-foot mast sections (available at Radio Shack). Even if one only has 10 watts for 6 Meters, a decent antenna setup described here will do reasonably well. Of course, results will generally be better when higher power levels are used.

When you run higher power, itís easier to hold on to a frequency where you can call CQ for longer periods of time. This is hard to do with a 10-watt station, and using the hunt and peck method works best for lower power stations. A station using an amplifier that can put out 150 watts will find it easier to hold on to the frequency for calling CQ, particularly as you get in areas close to the 6-meter calling frequency of 50.125 MHz. The advantage of being able to stay on one frequency and call CQ is that you can run very high QSO rates when the band is hot as opposed to moving around and searching for stations, which slows down the rate.

The beauty about 6 Meters is that if you set up your Field Day station correctly, there should be very little intermod interference between 6 Meters and the HF stations as is often seen between 10 Meters and other HF bands. If you canít get 10 Meters going, why not use 6 Meters to fill in the gap? What a lot of Hams donít realize is that Sporadic-E on 10 or 6 Meters is an extremely efficient propagation mode and signals can get very strong during a good opening such as the ones observed during Field Day.

The terrific openings on 6 Meters during the 1998 Field Day will whet the appetite of many of the Hams who were lucky enough to experience them. The word about this yearís great event will hopefully provide incentive for groups new to the band to set up a station for next year! Remember, the 6 Meter band does not count as a transmitter toward your overall transmitter classification, so you can essentially work hundreds of stations for free!

Hope to see you all on the Magic Band during next Field Day!