6m activity at this moment

[AE5NE]

Man there is a lot of 6m activity right now. Anyone know what contest is occuring?

[AE5NE]

I guess it's the June QSO Party

http://www.arrl.org/june-vhf-qso-party

[KB0XR]

Lots of activity around 1400 CDT here in Minneapolis but then the bottom dropped out. Not much on 2m SSB but I have very modest station so that might be part of it.

[AE5NE]

I was pretty amazed to hear that much activity on 6. I have never heard a peep on 6 before.  I made many contacts in a large arc from south dakota through minnesota and wisconsin across the great lakes and down the east coast to the carolinas...

[KH6AQ]

There is CW activity from 50090 to 50100

[KB0XR]

I managed 26 contacts with my 9 watts MFJ 9406 with a dipole at 8 feet.  Had a pipeline to the Southeast late in the afternoon.  Lots of big guns on 6 but I managed to bag a few of them. 

[KH6AQ]

KB0XR pretty good! I was running 100 watts on CW to a ground mounted screwdriver antenna. I managed only five Q's with three of them being local. But the out of state Q's were exciting. I heard many stations calling CQ with weak signals but only two heard me. It's time for a better antenna. I figured I'd put up a Par Moxon but they are not shipping amateur products at this time. So, I think I'll build or buy a small 6 meter Yagi. 

[AE5NE]

Now I just have to figure out how to get HRD to export the logs in a way the ARRL wants.

Ugh.

[K0OD]

From the scores coming in on "3830," conditions were fabulous on six everywhere but the west coast. One guy said he worked 48 states on six over the weekend!

What amazes me are the many stations who used makeshift antennas like tribanders, HF dipoles or loops and worked over 100 Qs in many states.  I think I saw one ham who worked 300+ Qs with a six meter loop.

Almost no one did well on two or up though.

[N3OX]

Almost no one did well on two or up though.

Two was a total wasteland here Saturday (which is actually saying something non-trivial in this area; I know a lot of people always have a wasteland).  I don't know if there were just a lot of single ops or what but I think people couldn't tear themselves away from six while they were pulling in multipliers.  That was certainly true for me.

I can never do really WELL on 2m & 432 because my antennas are only up 30 feet, but there was just nothing to be had when I checked on 2m or 432 on Saturday.  It picked up a little bit Sunday night as people started to do last-ditch CQing in all directions and a few new people got on for the end.   I ended up with 26Q's on 2 and 11 or something on 432 I think.

I had my fingers crossed for some good tropo on Sunday to go with the good Es of Saturday but it didn't happen.   And unfortunately every time 6m opened it was basically the same opening... so even though it was open ALL day Saturday,  I was hearing the same stations (and regions) all day, even when it would close and open back again.

There were a few pretty cool events... I worked a couple of the New England stations and a close by VE3 on some type of backscatter propagation (I'm told it was probably FAI) and I worked a few double hop even with 100W and a Moxon.  I had a hard time getting the attention of the far away guys on SSB but I scrambled down to CW and called CQ when I knew they were coming in, and picked up Utah and California. 

But for the most part I was hearing the same stations in the EL and EM grids all weekend    Could have really used an opening to the upper Midwest instead for part of it.  Anyway it was really fun, and I shattered my personal best score in a VHF contest so it wasn't bad 

73
Dan

[N4UE]

Monday, 1600 EST, June 14th... 6M is wide open to all of Europe right now. The last time I heard this much DX was during the peak of the last cycle in 2000.
During the VHF contest this past weekend, the band was open SO much, I didn't even particpate! No challange.. ha ha

ron
N4UE
EM80of

[W5DQ]

What you experienced was the much publicized ARRL VHF/UHF June QSO Party. It will happen again the first weekend (I think) of September 2010. Same every year. Last year the propagation stunk and I didn't hear a blessed thing on 6M. This year, it cooperated and there was a really nice opening for most of the US and EU for both days of the contest. Here in the Mojave Desert in grid DM15, we had a decent opening both days starting around 1900-2000Z (11AM - 12PM local) and lasting almost non-stop (except for a few dropouts) to some parts of the midwest/southeast/east coast FL to CT until 0000-0100Z (5 to 6 PM local) . Never had any openings into EU from here but I did see some west coast stations working into HI and AK but I listened wishfully and never heard any activity from those areas. It appeared however that I had a direct pipeline into Texas over to Georgia for most of the weekend. Luckily, I did snag 4 of the final 6 states needed for 6M Worked All States during the contest  .

Using a 7 element yagi @ 40' and about 800W peak, I managed to pull down 150 QSOs and 91 unique grids for a score of 13650. Not sure where that might put me in the rankings and I might have gotten more Q's but I took breaks to let a buddy who was about a mile away from me work looking for new grids during the contest. When I was on running a string, he could not operate as his receiver was overloaded. So we took turns working. Sharing is more important than winning in my book. Maybe we should team up and run as a multi-op  .

Hope everyone did well in the test. I plan on being on 6M and possible 2M in the Sept test.

73

Gene W5DQ

[W4KVW]

There was about a 30 minute opening on 2 meters as well on Saturday during the contest.I worked several stations in Michigan & Wisconsin from here in EM80(North Fla.)on 2 meters before it DIED! }:>)

Clayton
W4KVW