Topband: Equinox EU DX season report at VE6WZ

[Jim Brown]

On 3/21/2026 7:01 AM, Mike Smith VE9AA via Topband wrote:
> I spent decades working everything that moved on 6m cw and to a lesser
> degree, ssb.  Since ft has taken over 6m I almost never turn a 6m rig on.
> But I digress.
> 
> I even went so far as to leave sites like on4kst chats and other logging
> programs bubble along (for alarms) when I was sleeping and squelch and scan
> the 6m rig.  More than once I'd be awoken after midnight to work something
> exotic while most others slept.

Hi Mike,

I was first active on 6M CW in 1957 from WV as W8FNI. Worked a lot of 
AU, was there for the great solar maxima (was it '57?). Then from 
Chicago, I remember E-skip openings when the band sounded like 40M. 
After moving to NorCal in 2005, single and double-hop E-skip, worked 
with a couple of 80M Yagis, broadside EU/VK and SA/JA w/100W. Then Yagis 
at 120 ft with legal limit. Been there, got the tee-shirt.

Since JT65, there has been ZERO CW activity out here. My last CW QSO on 
6M was a VE6 during a contest seven years ago, and it took 4 paper cards 
with green stamps to get a card from his rare grid.

Meanwhile, noise levels in the civilized world have risen more than 10 
dB, 20 dB in many places. Just as CW provides a 10 dB s/n advantage over 
SSB, FT8 provides a 10 dB advantage over CW with great ops on both ends. 
Ops on both ends are still using stations that they built, using their 
knowledge of electronics, transmission lines, antennas, and radio, and 
their study of propagation to make QSOs.

And 6M is VERY much like 160M with respect to propagation -- great 
propagation is rare, happens rarely, often at unpredictable times, and 
ya gotta be there when it happens. Serious ops have to LIVE on the band. 
Topband peaks in the winter, and great openings occur one night out of a 
couple of weeks. On 6M, in the six weeks either side of the summer 
solstice when E-skip openings peak. It takes double-hop and even 
triple-hop E-skip for you and me to work, and the gods align for these 
openings VERY rarely, and for minutes. And on BOTH bands, for most ops, 
we've got to be using FT8 to get over the noise.

I'm chasing a very difficult award, even more difficult because I live 
so far from the center of the US, to work all the grids in the lower 48 
US states, on 6M. I'm missing 9 out of 488, all with no hams, all 
requiring double or triple-hop E-skip and the signal to noise advantage 
of E-skip. Three are up along the Canadian border in ME, and VE stations 
in those grids count. I worked one of them last summer, in an opening 
that lasted 20 minutes. It takes a week-long expedition by a team loaded 
for bear with big power and big antennas. At 84, I don't expect to live 
long enough to finish.

I've primarily been a CW op of my 70 years in ham radio, but ham radio 
is FAR more than CW. It's also about learning and using technology and 
propagation, and learning and using new stuff. Radio started with Morse 
and spark, then CW, then AM, then SSB, then nearly a dozen WSJT modes 
that overcome noise and some that facilitate various tropospheric modes, 
meteor scatter, and moon-bounce.

I'm old enough to remember the AM vs SSB wars. The one about FT8 and CW 
is no different. I rarely work phone contests, have never worked an FT8 
contest, but love CW and enjoy RTTY contesting. All using a station I 
built with help from neighbors and my knowledge of propagation.

73, Jim K9YC